


goblin market

by villanelle



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-02-20 19:22:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2439980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/villanelle/pseuds/villanelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has known since childhood that yes, humans can be sold.</p>
<p>She just hadn't imagined that one day, she'd agree to selling herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. of sugar-baited words

He notices her at her brother’s trial. Of course he does. Appraising games of power is an ability intrinsic and imperative to Erwin; he takes note of all the players on the board without fail, even if most represent only pawns.

Mikasa Ackerman. A name Shadis had brought up a few weeks ago, Erwin recalls. His predecessor had moved on to become an instructor, and even though Shadis knew that the majority of top graduates would eventually be lured to the Military Police, he annually singled out to Erwin a few names that held realistic potential of being recruited to the Scouting Legion.

“Haven’t seen anyone move like that since you dragged out your criminal project from the capital’s underbelly,” Shadis had said gruffly. “You should consider her at least. There’s actually a decent chance she’d be persuaded to join the Scouts since her brother’s dead-set on it.”

“Brother?”

“Eren Jaeger. Also top ten. They’ll come in a pair, a triplet in fact, if they choose the Legion.”

Her name had thus lingered in Erwin’s mind. Shadis, after all, did not dispense with praise lightly. His words were also a reminder that while Levi stood, seemingly against all probability, resistant to death, no one in the Legion was invincible, though Erwin doubted that he would find another Levi in his lifetime.

At the tribunal, his attention is initially reserved completely for the brother and the urgent necessity of saving the boy’s life. When the court brings up her name though, a murmur bubbles up among the assembly, and his gaze follows everyone else’s to land on Mikasa Ackerman, top graduate of the 104th squad, foster sister to a Titan-shifter, and as her strikingly _different_ facial features seem to convey, the last human in possession of an essentially extinguished racial heritage. Erwin does not engage in the excited whispers that accompany the scrutiny of the girl, but he hears from somewhere behind him: “Never thought I’d see one of those still walking the Earth. An Oriental...it’s like seeing a fucking unicorn.”

The girl in question appears to not care about any of the stares directed at her. Her visage is a picture of composure for the most part, but there’s a fire in her eyes, which never leave her brother’s chained form, and every successive accusation against Eren Jaeger seems to crack her mask a little more.

After Levi does his part with the theatrics and brutality required, Erwin makes sure to take the proper amount of time thanking Zackley and smoothing Nile’s ruffled feathers. The small crowd gathering around Zackley to hassle him about his decision ignores Erwin by and large, but one richly outfitted figure claps him on the back and says jovially, “Erwin Smith, you can always be counted on to have the most interesting ideas.”

Alec Holden. A prominent magistrate who sat not only on the highest court but also orbited the capital’s most exclusive social circles -- and an occasional financial backer of the Scouting Legion when it suited his amusement.

“You should be smiling,” Alec suggests, and there’s a glint in his eyes, or perhaps just the reflection of the jeweled collar he wears. “It’s not often that the Commander of the Scouting Legion can claim a victory.”

Compared to what Erwin’s heard from the crowds after straggling back from expeditions, the magistrate’s words barely count as a jab.

“If there’s a true talent you have, Erwin,” Alec continues with his dual-edged compliments, “it’s finding diamonds in the rough. I have to say, that boy doesn’t seem remarkable at all from what I could see of him.”

His next comment is less innocuous. “The sister on the other hand...I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. You don’t stumble upon such an exquisite countenance every day.”

“Careful Alec,” another official warns. “Did you see the girl when Erwin’s dog started his demonstration? She has claws, that one.”

The magistrate merely chuckles, apparently not at all daunted. “I like them that way, spice in a girl’s sweetness.”

Deciding that this was a conversation leading to sordid paths more within the realm of the MP, Erwin politely excuses himself and resolves to forget about the whole thing. In the weeks that follow however, as Mikasa Ackerman becomes a Scout under his command, he finds himself watching the new recruits’ morning training through his office window, a tinge of pleasure rising whenever his sifting gaze lands on the girl wanted by so many.

 

* * *

 

Sasha is the first among the new recruits to notice the results of reduced funding.

After one of her peers implores her -- come on Braus, just a spare crust -- for the fifth time, she slaps her hands down on the communal dining table and hisses, “Nothing! I’ve got nothing, alright? I’ve snuck into nearly every officer’s room during cleaning sessions, and even their hoards are empty so you can all stop askin’!”

A few seats down from her, Mikasa studies the faces of the two most important people in her world and takes in how dull their usually bright eyes look. Armin, whose cheeks had retained remnants of baby fat even throughout the two years of Shadis’s training, has a gauntness to his face that was not there before. Even Eren is quiet tonight, foregoing his regular fervor-driven dialogue and instead, slowly dragging a spoon across the bottom of the bowl in front of him.

The three of them had joined the military for many reasons of course, but one of those reasons had been for the simple fulfillment of assured nutrition, which they had lacked as refugees. Mikasa doesn’t regret her choice, would never, ever, regret following Eren, but yesterday, the sharp pang of hunger had been accompanied by the fleeting, yet poisonous thought: why, why couldn’t he have chosen the Military Police?

Immediately afterwards, she had called to mind the memory of Hannes and willed that bitter wisp away.

“I’m going to bed early,” she says abruptly and pushes her bowl towards the boys across from her.

“Mikasa you don’t need to --”

“Bed, Eren. I have a headache.” She gets up to leave and is satisfied that as she turns, two hands gradually move to grasp their spoons.

 

* * *

 

Undeniably, it is a sumptuous spread. Meats, cheeses, fresh rolls of bread -- which most of the Scouts hadn’t encountered for over a week, and even fresh, ripe fruit -- which had basically become a forgotten food category. Alec Holden arrives without notice at the Legion’s headquarters and promptly orders that the baskets of food his household servants brought be laid out for the soldiers.

“I’ve heard that funding has ran a little dry as of late,” Alec explains. “And I said to my friends, even if the Legion hasn’t returned on investment recently, we shouldn’t allow good soldiers to starve. Maybe some better food will inspire your next great moment of tactical genius. Grapes, Erwin?”

“No thank you.” Erwin has practiced enough times in front of mirrors as well as bureaucrats to know just how to control the muscles of his face so that he looks blandly unoffended and relaxed. “But I must express my gratitude for this display of generosity to my men.”

“And women,” Alec adds. “Can’t forget them.”

Erwin allows his jaw to tighten, a hint of dislike evident for the first time around the magistrate. There is, at the moment, no one else in their immediate vicinity, no one else whose standards of politeness he has to satisfy. “Let’s not waste each other’s time, Alec. Is there something you came here for?”

The magistrate plucks a few grapes from their stem, pops one into his mouth, and carelessly rolls the others across the table. “This treat could be a one-time special occasion for the Legion. Or, there might be the possibility I could be persuaded to extend my generosity.”

He isn’t looking at Erwin anymore. His gaze is far off, resting on a certain ink-haired girl -- was that a smile on her face for once -- who was breaking apart a piece of bread to share with Armin Arlert.

“You know, for a good long while, I was so sure she would end up in the MP. I kept asking Nile about her and teasing him if he was keeping her for...internal privileges, but I finally found out she’s here with your company. I couldn’t stop thinking, how has a young girl like that fared amidst your rough and tumble group? She probably hasn’t even gotten enough nourishment to develop and face a Titan.”

“Oh I’m sure you’re just interested in a young soldier’s development,” drawls a sneering voice, and Erwin passes Levi a warning look.

Alec doesn’t seem phased at all. “Humanity’s strongest,” he greets the Corporal. “Your words cut as deep as your swords, though it’s a surprise that the Commander here has not instructed you on how to speak to your betters.”

“Don’t forget the gutters of where you came from.” The magistrate brushes by Levi, velvet sleeve against military uniform, as he walks away. “Especially since no one else will.”

Erwin clamps his hand on Levi’s shoulder before the Corporal can do anything that would rain down consequences on all of them, and the two men watch stonily as the magistrate makes his way across the dining hall. He stops right behind Mikasa, and her briefly relaxed countenance returns to wariness once more at being addressed by a stranger.

Levi speaks first. “You’re not seriously thinking --”

“It’s not unheard of,” Erwin cuts him off sternly. “You of all people should know that.”

Sacrifice. Everyone in the Scouting Legion knew that joining meant personal sacrifice. Erwin remembers Mikasa Ackerman standing before him when she joined, her salute perfectly executed, her dark eyes dry and steadfast unlike several of her peers’. She’s the type that will continue to endure sacrifice, but he seriously doubts that she was expecting one within such an unsavory domain when she joined.

 

* * *

 

Erwin puts it off for as long as he can, and there are plenty of other priorities with which to preoccupy himself, but when a letter arrives informing him that another budget cut was being debated for the Scouting Legion, he knows he can’t avoid it any longer. He waits in his office for her at the latest hour of the Scouts’ workday, and as he waits, it strikes him that a summons at such a time could itself be interpreted as an inappropriate gesture. Groaning softly, he rubs his right temple. Ackerman will probably be looking at him with suspicion as soon as she walks through his door and will just as likely be ready to bolt soon after.

When a knock on the door finally interrupts his thoughts, its sound is as hesitant as he expected, but the girl who enters looks as quietly assured of herself as ever.

“Sir,” she salutes. “Armin said you wanted to see me?”

“Yes, that’s correct. Would you like to sit down, Ackerman?”

She moves, efficiently, like a soldier, Erwin observes, but there is a grace to her movements, a fluidity that explains why her peers and even some of the veteran Scouts turn up to watch her maneuver on the training grounds.

“Last week, when Magistrate Holden paid us a visit, did you speak with him?”

Her brow wrinkles a little, and she frowns as she replies yes.

“Did you talk about anything in particular?”

Mikasa's expression morphs into one of open confusion now, and her eyes search his for answers as she recounts, “The magistrate said he remembered me from Eren’s trial because of my hair. He told me it was a shame that I keep cutting it.” She pauses, her next words more haltingly surrendered. “Then he voiced his belief that I deserved something extra.”

“Such as?” Erwin prompts her. Had Alec already propositioned her directly?

Mikasa shrugs, clearly of the mindset that the extra something had not been that impressive. “It was some sort of sweet. Chocolate, I think he called it.”

“Did you like it?” The question escapes Erwin before he can suppress it, and his eyes drop to her mouth before flicking back up. Why, he wonders to himself, was he dragging this on? He feels suddenly, a wrench in his gut, a sense that he was baiting the girl, as much a predator as others were.

“I didn’t bother to taste,” she shoots back crisply, her eyes narrowed and ah there was that undertone of suspicion again. “I’m not very fond of sweet things.”

Erwin leans back in his chair, drums three of his fingers on his knee, and tries to not imagine how Alec would probably offer the girl many more sweet things before he was through with her. At last, he breathes out, “There is no such thing as a free meal, not for us, Miss Ackerman, and I called you here because --”

“He wants something from me in return, doesn't he?” A stormy tension is etched in her face, in her whole form actually, a slingshot ready to release, and he has assessed her in enough situations to recognize the girl's instinctive predilection to let loose violently. For a moment, he almost anticipates her fury and perhaps even a possible fist with welcome.

His lack of an immediate response seems to light a black flame in her coal-dark eyes, but her voice is unexpectedly soft as she challenges, “Well Commander, are you going to order me to provide extra services for the magistrate?”

Erwin is fully aware he could. What was ordering a girl to help gain funding relative to ordering someone to die? He could order her and tell her that she shouldn't be surprised, that if she had joined the MP, this would practically be a regular occurrence. He could tell her some of his own stories and watch her reaction to the knowledge that even the Commander of the Legion has prostituted himself for funding, for his goals, for humanity’s sake if he wants to give those murky affairs a tint of nobility.

He doesn’t. He remembers reading the reports on her, absorbing the story on how she had come to be part of Eren Jaeger’s family after losing her own. Disgust rises at the thought of delivering this girl, gift-wrapped, to the same type of greedy hands that she’d escaped years ago. He brings death to many of his soldiers, and he might lead her to a bloody end next month or next year, but forcing this violation on a girl who has already lost her innocence in many ways seems all of a sudden like a much worse crime.

“No,” he says tiredly. “I am not giving you any such order.”

Her lips part, and he knows she wants to ask him why, but he shakes his head and tells her, “No need to keep you up any longer, Ackerman. You need to be well-rested for training tomorrow. Good night.”

“But sir --”

“Good night, Ackerman.” His tone returns to that which she hears at strategy meetings, and she decides that there’s no reason to fight him over a dismissal she should be thanking him for.

As the door closes heavily behind her, Erwin sighs and uncrumples the warning letter. He scans it, reads it again, and finally decides that alcohol can be a permitted indulgence tonight as he ponders how the Legion will pull through the next month with another slash in their bleeding dry budget.

 

* * *

 

Mikasa doesn’t sleep. For one thing, there’s definitely a bed in the room that she shares with a few of the other girls that is squeaking from the pressure of more than one occupant. She doesn’t really care to identify the pair since Ymir is growling variants of “just make her come already” every minute anyway.

For another, she can’t stop thinking about her meeting with the Commander that had not turned out as she’d dreaded and expected. Could she really say his confirmation of what Alec Holden wanted was that much of a surprise? The magistrate’s hand, cold and heavy due to the metal of his many rings, placed over her clavicle and the slight trail it followed down the slope of her shoulder; both of the man's gestures had already been too suggestively familiar. Moreover, she’d lied to the Commander. She had tasted the chocolate, had taken a bite of it when the magistrate asked in a way that did not really sound like a request, and she had shivered from the rush of queasiness when she saw how he smiled as he watched her taste it.

The escalating sounds announce that the girl with the extra bedmate is finally approaching her climax, and the moan that follows makes Mikasa twist uncomfortably in her bed. At seventeen, she’s aware that most of the cadets in her age group have crossed into the territory of being fully sexually active while she hasn’t even ventured into the borderlands of foreplay, but never has her inexperience presented itself as an actual problem until now.

Because she closes her eyes and thinks of how much Eren, Armin, Sasha, even sour-faced Captain Levi had looked healthier, more alive, for a week as they finished off what the magistrate had brought. And because even if the Commander said no, the part of her that has witnessed human corruption first-hand whispers that men like the magistrate tend to get what they want in the end.

Just an interaction of the flesh. Didn’t she and her comrades sacrifice their flesh every day with the training and fighting that military life perpetually threw at them? Flesh for food. A meeting of flesh that was simply another fight for survival.

Lightly, her fingertips brush across the tip of a breast and slide down the curve to caress. It’s not particularly gratifying, and in a brief moment of inspiration, or insanity, she imagines a much larger, masculine hand in place of her own. Responding to that illicit thought, to the surprising appeal of how _wrong_ the idea is, her body finally produces a tingle of arousal, warm beneath her chestbone, pulsing between her legs. 

“Fuck,” she whispers out loud to herself.

“No!” Ymir snarls. “I swear, by the walls of Maria, Rose, and Sina, if they start up again, I’m throwing them outside.”

The couple takes her threat seriously and is resoundingly silent in the aftermath.

 

* * *

 

When his office door opens again, Erwin doesn’t bother at first to look up. Fifty-fifty, he thinks, that it’s either Levi or Hange because no one else comes to see him this late, and they’re the only ones who don’t knock.

Instead, he hears a soft clearing of the throat and then, “I’ve changed my mind.”

Mikasa is there, still holding onto the door handle as if she's not sure of being in the right room. She’s changed out of her uniform to what he can only assume she wears to bed, a white gown and a pink cardigan that makes her look even younger than she is.

His hand hovers in the air for too long, and a fat drop of ink stains the paper he will have to rewrite tomorrow. “Pardon?”

As she crosses the room towards him, the white fabric of her gown shifts and slides over the vague lines of her hips. Her final step positions her at the edge of the desk directly opposite to where he sits, and with her now closer to the candlelight, Erwin curses internally because the girl’s garments are evidently sheer.

“I want to help the Legion in whatever way I can,” she clarifies. “So you can write to the magistrate and tell him yes, I will give him what he wants with the understanding that we will have secured resources for this month as well as the next.”

“Ackerman, I told you, I am not ordering you to --”

“Right, you’re not ordering me.” Her resolute gaze flickers and connects with his, then breaks away as she stares at some spot on the wall behind him.

“You’re sharp at making deals, aren’t you sir?” she says. “Because I’m really hoping you get a good one out of this.”

It’s rare that anyone can make Erwin feel at a loss for words, but this girl is bucking that trend. He’s not even sure that she understands the gravity of what’s she putting forth. “Mikasa,” he tries out her first name awkwardly. “Entering into this sort of arrangement should not be the result of a rash, late-night decision. This may not be a one-time thing. He might ask for more.”

She lets out an abrupt, humorless laugh. “Well, you can fill me in on the details after you negotiate them.”

Hyper-conscious now of the tension between them and of the Commander’s probing blue eyes, Mikasa spills out her addendum. “There is one more thing. I’ve never done this before, never been with a man I mean, and I would rather be prepared for it with someone who is not a stranger.”

She looks at him briefly again. She looks like someone he has just sent to battle. "And with someone I trust."

"And you place such trust in me?"

"We train to follow you 'til death. What greater trust could I place in a superior?"

His grasping for words before is nothing compared to how he feels at her implication. For a long moment, he considers telling the girl to seek someone else for her need. He’s well aware of course of her devotion to Jaeger. Even if the boy views her as too firmly cemented in a sisterly light and rebuffs her, there’s a line of other candidates more suitable, closer to her in age and rank at least, starting with Kirschstein and ending, well would it even have an end?

But something tells him that those options are out of the question for her. Approaching someone else would be contaminating to her other relationships, and her actions give every indication of preferring to contain this matter to just inside this room, to the only two people who know her purpose.

He regrets draining the glass and a half of liquor now because that indulgence is drawing out another voice assuring him that Ackerman would benefit more from someone with experience than some fresh recruit. That voice cannot deny his notice of how truly pretty she is, her lips petal pink and her throat, bare for the first time in his memory, a column of untouched skin that with every breath, sinks into indents at the base. Soft, girlish features at contrast with the body she’s hardened through endless rigor. It's a contrast that interests him, a geography he's certain is worth devoted exploration. 

Even more darkly insidious, a voice inside him understands why Holden asked for such a girl. 

He is not a good man by many measures, and he knows it as he says, “Alright cadet, I can prepare you tonight, if that’s acceptable.”

Mikasa knows that the relief she feels at his answer is not at all appropriate, but there is to her surprise, no sudden urge to second-guess and turn back.

“Yes please, tonight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because even rare pairs deserve (eventual) smut?
> 
> Story and chapter titles taken from Christina Rossetti because her 19th-century poetry still makes me blush today.


	2. a tear more rare than pearl

Mikasa has never really felt the need to imbibe alcohol, but she figures that there must be a reason why some call it liquid courage, and though she has never lacked in courage on the battlefield, she feels all of a sudden desperately in need of it in this room. Her eyes dart to the Commander’s own empty glass and the decanter next to it on the desk. He doesn’t fail to notice and wordlessly pours her a moderate amount of the honey-colored liquor, pushing it across the table with a mild look of amusement.

She downs most of it too fast and winces a little at the burning aftertaste but feels disappointingly only warmer, not braver. As she sets the glass down, Erwin’s hand reaches out and encloses around her wrist, not tightly but just a close enough fit so that the pad of his thumb can stroke the fragile skin at her pulse. She still can’t hold his gaze for longer than a few seconds, and it worries her that the Commander might deem her unusual nervousness as a sign that she’s not ready. 

“I didn’t realize I was so hard to look at,” he says, his tone light, aiming to relax. “We can try something….less direct to start, but you’ll have to come over here first.”

Well, she assures herself, she’s chosen him because he knows what he’s doing more than she does and so she obeys. With her joining his side of the desk, Erwin tugs the girl down onto his lap. Awkwardly, Mikasa shifts a little, trying to adjust to her perch. She hasn’t felt small like this since she was a child. As a soldier, she’s trained herself to disregard how her male counterparts are often bigger than her, refusing to acknowledge their size as an advantage in strength. But the broader and larger frame of the Commander’s body is now impossible to ignore, pressed as it is against her back. 

As he peels away her cardigan, she thinks back to his prior words. The truth is quite the opposite. He is not at all difficult to look at. Back when she’d still been a trainee, many of her female classmates had divulged superficial but highly appreciative comments about the man. Tawny-haired Hitch Dreyse had even joked on the eve of their graduation that looking at Commander Smith made her want to re-evaluate opting for the Military Police. 

Mikasa has never quite thought about him that way, not until tonight. In her mind, the Commander has been almost exclusively an authority figure, more symbol than man. His manner tended to come off as perpetually formal, detached, sometimes even glacial, and it’s a spark of surprise to her that his chest radiates a warmth that matches how she feels, especially through her one remaining layer of clothing. He hasn’t removed her gown. Instead, his hands push the ends of the fabric up to her hips and then slide back down the skin he’s revealed.

She’s wearing nothing underneath, and his touch easily transitions from a simple massage to a more intimate tracing along her inner thighs, the paths of his fingers converging at her core.

“Completely bare….did you come here expecting that I would say yes to your terms?” Erwin asks, a low murmur in her ear.

“No sir,” she replies, embarrassment leading her to slip in the courtesy title again. “But I told you, I like being prepared for any outcome.” 

She’s just beginning to enjoy how he brushes patiently at the lips of her mound when one of his hands unexpectedly departs, and her body shifts with his as he sits forward slightly. She watches as he dips his fingers into the liquor still left in the glass, coating them with a dripping wet sheen, and then touches her sex again. His fingers feel cool and thick as he sheathes one, then two, inside of her, and Mikasa is compelled to grind forcefully down on his lap, hips reacting instinctively to the pleasure at her cunt, the contrast of cold liquid to her molten heat.

“There we go,” Erwin whispers, pressing his open mouth to her neck, languid as he tastes the stretch of skin there she’s so frequently concealed. He isn’t idle with her upper body either. While one of his hands continues to roam between her legs, the other hand sneaks underneath her night shift, skimming the quivering lines of her torso to seek out her breasts. Scarcely half an hour ago, Mikasa had touched herself there and had been almost convinced that she simply was not sensitive in those zones. Clearly, as Erwin seems determined to teach her, her belief had been mistaken because she likes, really likes, how his larger hands mold around the weight of her breasts. After a few minutes, his manipulation of her body has her taking on a faster and faster rhythm in his lap, her bottom rolling enticingly, if not quite smoothly, against his groin, against the bulge that begins to press into her. 

Half of Mikasa wants to lean back and just enjoy the ride with eyes closed, but the other half provokes her to stare down, a voyeur to her own unmaking as he smears another layer of the liquor over her cleft, mixing it with her own increasing wetness.

“You might be more comfortable somewhere else for the next part,” he suggests.

“Do you even have a bed?” she grounds out. The rumor that the Commander never sleeps is half accepted as fact.

His chuckle is a huff of breath against her shoulder. “I do in fact. A seldom visited bed, but it does exist down this corridor.”

Mikasa lets the information sink in and quickly decides against that option. Further down the hallway are the other officers’ rooms as well, and making sure that no one else finds out about this remains a foremost priority.

“No, no let’s finish this here.”

“Hmm, your choice.” And suddenly, he is hauling her up. This time, he strips her of the gown before coaxing her to sit on the desk with legs spread in an inverted V. 

Erwin sinks to his knees, and it’s strange to see her superior officer kneeling. What’s truly changed the dynamic however is that it’s no longer the faceless encounter it was while she sat on his lap. He looks directly at her, his eyes darker than their usual cool blue, and she’s transfixed by how electric the return of visual contact feels, now an element that adds to her arousal. For a few long moments, it’s just his eyes on her, but her whole body tightens like a spring in anticipation.

He cranes forward until she can see only the crown of his blonde hair, so fair-colored compared to her own. Her first audible cry of the night comes out as he licks away the glisten of liquor and then licks into her, tongue parting the swollen lips of her sex to lave into every slick dip and crevice. Mikasa had heard before about this particular act, once or twice from Ymir. Considering the source, she hadn’t expected that a male would also be willing to do it, but the man in front of her currently is, and she has no complaints. She can’t help but pursue the surging pleasure, and her hips rise upwards, mound pressing into his mouth so insistently she feels almost ashamed to be so wanting.

She revels in how slowly his tongue drags inside of her, like he’s savoring her, but what sends her over the peak is an unexpected nip at her clit, that one point a revelatory trigger to a pure wash of bliss. The table is still hard against her ass, the room still more than a bit chilly to her nakedness, but as she comes hard on his desk, her sensory world is reduced to just how his mouth remains to drink at her, prolonging the feeling of everything burdensome being swept away.

Mikasa has been on edge for the most part since the start of this encounter, but winding down from the high, the sense of being unraveled is all she feels. In the transitory, panting aftermath, there are no thoughts of how very wrong this situation is, of how her next sexual experience will probably be not even close to satisfying as this one. 

She shifts, almost experimentally, on the desk, as if surprised her legs can even move. As she does so, it hits her that she’s just come all over and is still dripping on a surface that is entirely not appropriate for the occasion. 

“Your papers,” she manages to breathe out.

The Commander makes a sound that, at first, seems like he too is regretting their choice of a setting, but when she looks down at him, she realizes he’s quietly laughing. 

“Okay, that must have been a lackluster performance on my part if you’re still able to worry about my paperwork,” he says with a shake of his head, and she’s briefly distracted by how his mouth and jaw are still wet with her taste.

“Well, I assume sir, that whatever you work on at this desk is important,” Mikasa protests. It’s remarkable at how quickly she can feel childish again in front of this man considering what he’s just done to her. 

The corners of his lips turn upward. “Sir? Are we already going back to formalities?”

Her eyes trail down his form, and she’s instantly aware of how clothed he is compared to her and of how she hasn’t touched him yet.

He doesn’t seem to be expecting her to do that however, because he stands, tall over her once again, and re-initiates contact, tracing the abdominal groove that starts just below the valley of her breasts and runs to her navel. “I’d already ruined a letter during your first visit,” Erwin explains, his tone imbued with a soothing huskiness. “As for everything else, let’s just say that my mindset afterwards was not exactly suitable for writing anything official so it’s alright, nothing past first draft quality.” 

His left hand slides in a half-circle around her hip and then skates down to cup roughly the curve of her ass. “And now cadet, I’d like for you to show me your decision-making skills. Would you prefer to learn how to ride, or do we stay right here where you can lie back?”

 

* * *

 

For everything he does, Erwin has his reasons, and his care in rendering Mikasa’s pleasure a priority over his is no exception.

Oh, he enjoys it of course. That he can’t deny. Taking such sordid liberties with his cadet’s beautifully honed body draws out a hedonistic pleasure in him that he hasn’t felt in years. In his own insufficient way however, this is how he chooses to make amends to the girl, to her body which she’ll soon offer to someone else.

Ackerman walked through his door and told him it’s her choice to accept the magistrate’s advances. She delivered her terms while carrying herself with purpose, but Erwin still keenly senses that she’s a girl backed into a corner and feels like a monster clothed in human skin because he too is profiting from her flesh.

Men, he knows, are sometimes no better than Titans. They just devour more slowly.

On his desk recovering, Mikasa still sits, glimpses of her drenched sex alternately visible and hidden as her lean legs stretch in elegant lines from hip to tapered toes. It’s a sight that makes him want to mouth at her again, and he’s sure it won’t leave his memory easily.

She’s considering her options though, and after a quiet lull, she says, “Alright, on the chair then.”

He’s been hard since her first romp on his lap, and remembering how deliciously tight she felt around his fingers only heightens the welcome relief of undoing his belt and lower straps. Taking a seat, Erwin strokes himself a few times before noticing that his partner appears to be frozen to the desk. Her lips, which had just been parted in such a ripe invitation, are now being almost pulverized between her teeth as she stares at his cock.

She looks up, briefly, to meet his inquiring gaze and then back down immediately. “I just don’t know if I can sit on that -- on you.”

“You managed well only a while ago,” he points out, bemused.

She doesn’t look very convinced, but she slides off the desk and steps forward before stopping again. “What do I…?”

“Like this.” Erwin places his hands on the swell of her hips and pulls her onto his lap again, her thighs crossing with his so that she’s straddled firmly against him. Mikasa looks and feels tense in his arms at this new closeness. He’s already been inside of her technically speaking, but during what they did before, they’d maintained a certain distance, not facing each other and then him going down on his knees. Now however, she’s so close he could peer down and count her eyelashes. For once, he doesn’t mind the strangeness of intimacy. He’s accustomed to his soldiers keeping their distance, physically and emotionally; in fact he prefers it. Being this close to Ackerman however feels not like the collapse of hierarchy but rather like the bestowal of a secret, of something he’s desperately wanted to hear.

“Anything else?” the girl asks, holding herself very, very still.

Erwin takes her hand and guides it to his heated flesh. His thumb presses down on hers as he steers her to swipe the moisture beading at the tip, smearing it down his cock. On her own, she lifts her lower body and descends, slowly. They’re both intently focused as she takes him inside of her, but Erwin’s pretty sure he has the better view and wouldn’t rush her for the world. There’s no barrier of a membrane to slow them down, but she struggles with how deeply he has to push to fit inside, making her painfully aware of every thick inch. By the time her lush bottom settles back down on his lap, the cadet looks like she’s already spent for the night. He on the other hand is not at all inclined to let her go.

It's easily the best he's felt in several weeks, being cradled in her sweet tightness while stroking her thighs and her soft wet folds, strained around the length and girth of his cock, to soothe her into pleasure again. Still adjusting on him, Mikasa gives a little clench to the walls of her sex, as if to test the rigid outline inside her, and Erwin groans, fighting the urge to lay her down on the desk and drive into her with no restraint.

He moves for her, for the both of them, hips thrusting shallowly at first into her enveloping heat, but that teasing friction quickly becomes insufficient. He sits up, pulls her even closer, and Mikasa lets out a noise as if he’s impaled her. His abruptness spurs some latent reserve of energy in her, and the girl practically snarls as she shoves back at him and snaps her hips into a rhythm that begins to match how she grinded on him before.

Ah there it is, Erwin thinks to himself with satisfaction. That innate ferocity. Her fire seemingly, hopefully, inextinguishable.

In this domain however, Mikasa is still just a novice, and he retakes control with a rough grasp at the supple sweat-slicked flesh of her swaying breasts, biting down into the nipple of one in a move that’s harsher than anything else he has pulled with her tonight. She clenches hard around him this time, slumping forward in surrender, but as she tucks her head onto the shelf of his shoulder, she gives him one last surprise: a sucking bite on the base of his neck that’s perhaps as stinging as the one he gave her.

He wrenches out and comes, thick and hot, on her stomach, but Mikasa doesn’t give any sign of discomfort at being soiled, only continuing to lean against him, gasping softly.

“Thank you,” she says once she's close to catching her breath, and she sounds so schoolgirl sincere that he allows himself for a moment to feel the warmth of her words as if he actually deserves them.

_To herself, she says, Remember this. Remember that it can actually feel good. The next time this happens and you’re under someone else’s body, you’ll need to remember this._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First time writing anything this explicit, and well, they say practice makes perfect. Hence, the whole chapter of porn.


	3. goblin merchant men

There’s someone on her bed, nudging her gently at first and then shaking her with a little more urgent force.

Mikasa wakes up, startled and disoriented. For a moment, she almost expects to see blue eyes peering down at her, but the orbs she sees instead are maple sugar brown, familiar and concerned. It’s Sasha, already dressed and leaning forward to place a hand on Mikasa’s forehead.

“Hey, are you feeling okay?”

Mikasa opens her throat to speak and winces at how raspy her voice comes out. “Yeah, I’m just really tired. How late is it?”

“You missed showers and morning formation, but that’s about it. Don’t worry by the way, the Commander sent a note down that you were to be excused if you didn’t show up for formation.”

And the memory of last night comes flooding back. “Oh, so right now should be -- “

“Breakfast time!” Sasha finishes, bouncing up and holding her hand out. “Which you really shouldn’t miss. So come on!”

As she rolls out of bed, Mikasa becomes instantly aware of how the muscles in her legs ache, of the twinge of pain in her pelvic area, but she hides it and dresses herself quickly without attracting any further suspicion from Sasha.

Downstairs in the mess hall is a different story.

Ymir is the first to comment as Mikasa and Sasha approach the new recruits’ table. “ _Someone_ went to bed very late last night,” she drawls, and Mikasa wonders if the older girl is taking revenge for her repeatedly frustrated sleep. “In fact, I’m pretty sure you didn’t make it back until this morning. Whoever he was, kudos to his stamina.”

“Why are you assuming it was a he?”

Ymir mock-gasps. “Well, you should’ve just asked to share my bed if you were in the mood for cunt.”

The boys’ conversation next to them has gone silent. Her brother and Jean Kirschstein are staring at her with twin expressions as if she had just revealed aberrant Titan status. It’s a little funny, Mikasa notes, how extreme their reactions are juxtaposed to Armin’s. The latter boy’s eyes are shaped wide with curiosity and worry, but there’s no indication that Ymir’s words have ignited multiple scandalous scenarios in his head, unlike their effect on the other two.

For a second, the blue of Armin’s eyes is distracting, their shade chromatically similar yet more vivid than the ones that had gazed up at her last night from between her parted knees.

_Stop it_ , she self-admonishes. _They can’t know._

Out loud, Mikasa says coldly, “Do I really seem like the type that would sneak out for a late-night fuck? I couldn’t sleep with all of the noise in our room so I pulled another workout in the gym.” She will never amount to much of a liar, but Armin’s told her that when she’s angry, it’s slightly more convincing, or perhaps, just intimidating but hey, whatever works.

“And for that, you needed the Commander’s permission?”

Her throat constricts. “No, but he was finishing up when I got there.”

Her freckled-skin tormentor just smiles. “Oh Mikasa, aren’t you a model of overachievement for all of us.”

Mikasa is glad that there are no more temptations after that to launch herself at Ymir with their breakfast being so short and even gladder to throw herself into the day’s routines afterwards. She ignores the strain in her upper thighs as she jogs laps and makes up for missing morning calisthenics, determined to not let any weakness show under Corporal Levi’s hawk-eyed observation. She’s slower though during their runthrough of the maneuver course, not by much, maybe all of two seconds added to her time, but she doesn’t land first for once, and the Corporal’s gaze feels more critical than words as they brush over her carefully.

A thread of impatience develops in her as the hours pass closer to supper time. She heads into the mess hall, her steps a little more measured than they’d usually be, and she can’t help but scan the table where the higher up officers usually sit. Mike Zacharius towers over everyone else at the table as always, but the Commander’s comparably lofty frame is missing.

It’s a good thing, she tells herself. Not seeing him means that it’s easier to put what happened in the past where it belongs. It was a one-time occurrence, a simple need to not have her first sexual experience be with a lusting stranger set on buying himself into her bed. And now it’s over.

Later however, as she strips off her uniform and searches for a clean shift to sleep in, she looks down at herself and matches her fingers to the imprints on her hips, the bruised halo around her nipple. For the most part, he had been as gentle with her as a man of his size could have possibly been, but she definitely wasn’t unmarked.

Eventually, she gives up on hunting through her meager wardrobe and crawls into bed in the same gown discarded on the Commander’s floor one night ago. As her head burrows into the pillow, she thinks drowsily to herself that her pink cardigan might still be somewhere on his floor.

 

* * *

 

Perhaps, Erwin contemplates as the day goes on, it would have been better if he had sent the girl away and just taken out his frustrations at a brothel.

What happens at a brothel at least doesn’t come home with you.

In his case however, there seem to be remnants of the cadet he just bedded (had intercourse with, he corrects himself, since they hadn’t even made it to a bed) everywhere he goes. He hits the showers in his personal washroom, an officer luxury that he actually appreciates, and shoves himself under the spray while it’s still cold, the liquid ice jarring his senses into wakefulness. As the water acquires some semblance of warmth, he picks up the plain bar of standard issue military soap and finds himself fixated on the strand of black hair still adhered to the surface. He doesn’t peel it off, just begins rubbing some lather onto his hands and thinks of how less than five hours ago, he’d finally convinced Mikasa to follow him down the hallway so that she could wash off the sweat and mixed fluids.

She hadn’t been expecting him to walk into the shower stall with her, but she’d grudgingly accepted that the sound of two showers would be more disturbing at such a late hour than one, and so they had stood in the crammed wet space, trying to wash clean without bumping into each other.

Neither of them had attempted to touch the other, but there’d been one moment of acute temptation on Erwin’s part to do so when she had tilted her head back to soak her hair under the showerhead, rivulets of water running down her throat to the swell of her breasts, enhancing a sensuality that the girl probably wasn't even aware she possessed.

As he shaves in front of the small, square mirror in the washroom, he assesses the girl’s mark at the base of his own neck, grazing his collarbone. There’d been a lot of tongue put into making that mark but a bit of teeth as well, and he’s studied how bruises form on his body long enough to know that this one will last a few days. Thankfully, its placement is off to the side, covered up easily with a shirt carefully buttoned to the top.

He enters his office a little later than usual, and Hange is already there waiting. Briskly, Erwin opens a window to let the cool morning air breathe into the room and spots in his peripheral vision, a forgotten pink cardigan on the floor. He scoops it up, depositing it in a drawer while pushing his chair closer to the hollow of the desk so that he can properly sit down.

“Your late night toils?” Hange asks with affected casualness, nodding at the sheaves of parchment, disturbed from their typical neat arrangement. The top sheet is clearly ruined, a large splotch of ink marking where he left off; partially slipped underneath it, a crinkled letter admonishing him to “please be notified that the Magistrates Council will continue to advise greater restraint with dispensation of funding until provided further results.”

He has half a mind to send that letter back to Mitras, stained as it is with the come of one of his soldiers.

“A Commander’s desk is never clean of paperwork,” he replies with a bland smile. “Now, I assume you’re here with your latest experimental findings?”

She is, and they spend the next half-hour fully engrossed in going over her results. As the brunette squad leader gathers her own papers to leave, she says, “Oh, and I did notice the feminine apparel decorating your floor earlier by the way. Good for you. I have to ask though, does that mean all officers get the privilege of bringing personal acquaintances to headquarters, or is that solely a Commander’s allowance?”

“The latter,” Erwin answers because telling her that he brought no one would be the equivalent of implicating himself in fraternization. “Good eye though, Zoë. That’s why I have you. Nothing escapes your analysis.”

The laughter she leaves behind her is heartening; the paperwork he has to discard and redo is not. Erwin skips the whole day’s communal meals to eat at his desk while he rewrites the spoiled documents, ink and words flowing more easily from his pen than yesterday. Until he comes to a letter he has to write afresh, its content now completely changed.

He leaves it aside past morning and most of the afternoon. The sun is a fat globe descending in the sky when he takes the time to look outside his window again, and he lingers there by the sill upon spotting a certain head of hair that’s as lustrously black as the ink he writes with. Down on the training grounds, Mikasa has her arms crossed as Levi addresses her, and by the look of it, neither one of them is pleased with the other’s attitude.  

The girl reminds him of a Levi from years ago, who had entered the Corps tethered to two companions holding his heart. She reminds him of how Levi still is now, broken yet unbreakable.

At least, he hopes so.

For the Legion’s sake.

He seals the finished letter into an envelope and denotes with a wretched hand, ‘To be sent to Magistrate Holden.’

 

* * *

 

The head of the Scouting Legion hasn’t said a word to her, hasn’t spared a glance her way since she’d crept out of his room.

Mikasa coaches herself very successfully to not look at him either. And if she occasionally thinks at night of that proud body merging into hers, so what? She had made the right choice by checking off her physical inexperience with a mature and more importantly, discrete adult. With anyone else, the consequence would have most likely been an awkward intrusion into the normal proceedings of her life. With Erwin, it’s easy to act like that night never happened. Sort of.

It comes as a surprise when she is pulled aside during formation one morning and told that she’s to be relieved from duties for the rest of the day to carry out an errand for the Commander.

Mikasa takes the long way to his office, a stone in her stomach at the probable ‘errand.’ Erwin is at his desk when she enters, and a shiver runs through her at remembering the last time they faced each other like this.

She’s a little daunted when he stands up and walks straight to her, forcing her to look up. She’s grown rather used to being at eye level with the males in her age group, but girls mature faster, and she wonders if one day, the boys around her will carry themselves with the same type of confidence, of authority, that the Commander seems to naturally convey.

“Regarding the magistrate,” he says slowly. “Are you still determined to carry through with this?”

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, sir.”

An opened package lies on his desk, and at the Commander’s gesture, Mikasa pushes back the brown wrapping paper to view its contents. A sheet of parchment, detailed in its explanation and requirements. And a dress. A rich black fabric that she skims with a callused hand, tactile awareness leading her to guess that it’s a garment of higher quality than any that has ever been wrapped around her.

“He wants you to wear it,” Erwin voices from behind her.

Shakily, she laughs. “I suppose it’ll be easier to remove than our uniform, straps and all. Do you mind -- the door?”

He closes the door and stands guard there, his back turned, his ears distinctly cognisant of every leather belt that hits the floor as Mikasa sheds her regular uniform to slip into the dress. An unpleasant feeling rises in her at discovering how well it fits, as if the purchaser had appraised her measurements exactly. Mikasa has always paid more attention to the planes and harder contours of her body than the curves, but the sleeveless garment hugs snugly around her breasts and nips at the waist in a style that she instinctively knows is designed to emphasize the female form. A red sash, to tie around her waist according to the letter, is the last item in the package.

Slowly, she does as instructed and unwinds the scarf around her neck. “Sir?”

At her inquiring tone, Erwin turns around and takes in the unfamiliar sight. It’s a flattering fit, but she looks, he thinks to himself, too young to be wearing such a dress, her face still unpainted, girlish and gorgeous in its purity.

“Could you hold onto my scarf for me?” Mikasa asks. “Until I get back?”

The scarf feels warm to the touch, so recently parted from its owner.

“I think that’s everything,” she muses, her feet turning in a semi-circle to test the floor-length hem of the dress.

“There’s a carriage waiting for you at the east entrance. No one should see you if you head that way.”

The Commander is still blocking most of the doorway though, and Mikasa uncomfortably shifts around him, ready to leave.

“Ackerman,” he says abruptly, the sound spilling into an echo in the otherwise empty hallway. “Would you -- would it be intolerable if I came with you?”

She quirks one of her rare half-smiles at him over her shoulder. “It wouldn’t be so for me, sir, but I don’t think the magistrate would appreciate my coming with a babysitter.”

And then she’s gone, leaving him with that precious scarf, heavy in his hands.

 

* * *

 

She is a girl that’s faced down Titans, but something about this man terrifies her more than any fifteen meter class she’s encountered.

Well, Mikasa surmises, it could be that he’s buying and paying for you. And that means he owns you right now. That means he can do whatever he wants to you.

She feels like a child again, tied down and laid out on a floor for visual dissection.

The esteemed magistrate speaks to her like she’s a child, asking her if military routine ever gets boring for someone so young and if she gets enough to eat in the Legion.

None of her peers would describe her as verbose, but for once, she takes her time drawing out answers and watching the magistrate drink them in, some absurd dreaming part of her wondering if the man will be satisfied with just words.

“Your parentage…” Alec Holden probes. “From which one of them did you derive your exquisitely exotic features?”

“My mother.” Her answer is short and curt this time, her knuckles white on the plush purple lounge she sits on.

“Ah, I bet you look like her,” Alec says, and Mikasa hates the man for continuing to mention her mother. “I bet you got all this lovely, silken hair from her.”

It’s strange. She’s heard words in a similar vein from others over the years, from Jean Kirschstein who looks so wonderingly in her direction sometimes. But Jean’s words had retained respect in their admiration. Jean had glanced at her as if he wouldn’t dare lay a hand on her without express permission.

Not so the magistrate.

Alec leans in, wine and tobacco on his breath, to stroke her hair. He himself is completely bald, whether naturally or by personal preference, Mikasa doesn’t care to find out, but she’s starting to wish she’d asked one of the Medical Officers for a sedative.

“I chose the dress for how close it comes to the color of your hair. Do you like it, Mikasa?”

“Yes,” she lies, wondering if this is how it feels like to suffocate.

“I thought you would. But as much of a vision as you are in that dress, I think I would like to see a little more.”

He wears a perfume, she realizes, a smell so rottingly sweet and oppressive she could choke on it.

“Lift up your skirt.”

So much for just talking.

* * *

 

The carriage delivers her right back where it picked her up, and she heads straight to the showers without paying mind to anyone she passes in the halls. Dimly, she registers that Sasha might have been calling her name.

She stays under the stream of water until it runs cold, until it runs out, scrubbing herself pink with a coarse rag and a bar of hard soap handed out regularly to recruits. Dropped on the floor next to the dazedly shed dress is a box, among its contents a bottle of gel, herb-infused and fragrant; the magistrate had pressed it into her hands and instructed her to use it next time. She doesn’t try it out.

Clean, she thinks as the water slows to a trickle, her cheek pressed to the tiled wall, so clean even Corporal Levi would find no taint in her.

She heads to bed early, considers stripping the sheets that are suddenly itching at her nerves, and is in the midst of doing so when Armin opens her door.

“Mikasa?”

It’s just Armin, but his bright intelligent eyes make her feel like she’s been caught red-handed in a crime.

She had a lie ready, had prepared it in the carriage returning to headquarters, but as he studies her averted face, she knows he wouldn’t believe her anyway.

Something in him seems to wordlessly understand that she doesn’t want to say anything, would rather avoid the tiring lies; intuitively, he knows inner turmoil after identifying it among so many in their ranks.

Eren’s face appears right behind him, and she’s so accustomed to seeing her brother recently with a perpetual frown that his small smile makes her mind drift again to childhood, helpless to the nostalgic ache it evokes in her.

“You’re back,” he says. He glances at Armin, and she can only guess that they’ve discussed and agreed upon not interrogating her.

“Sasha mentioned that she saw you when you got back from the capital,” Armin says, broaching the strained atmosphere. “She said you looked...agitated when you rushed past her.”

“So that got us thinking, and we asked the other girls for permission to stay here tonight,” Eren fills in.

“With me?”

“Well duh,” her brother scoffs. “Of course, with you.”

The three of them remake the bed a little haphazardly, a little like children, before nestling in, each leaning against another.

 

 

 

It’s easier after that, to succumb to sleep.


	4. locked together in one nest

The faces of the dead surround him when he sleeps, and so he avoids it to the limits of his strength until ghostly hands pull him under, the howls of how they died amplified in his otherwise silent dreamscape.  

In the fog, someone speaks to him. The voice sounds like a vague memory of his father’s, telling him to open his eyes.

Erwin awakens, and the oak wood grain pressed against his cheek is familiar, a comfort. Much less so is the ache that he feels from neck to spine, making itself known as he sits up straight. The early morning light filtering through his window informs him that he must have spent the entire night at his desk, and as much as he yearns to stagger down the hallway and fall into an actual bed, he’s swiftly alert to the sound of booted heels right outside his door.

“Oh, you’re awake.”

It’s Ackerman, looking so fresh and well-rested that it makes him sharply aware of how disheveled he must look. She strides forward, setting down on his desk a tray laden with a small kettle and two cups, the first holding a generous helping of tea leaves and the second wafting an aroma he hasn’t smelled since a meeting inside the inner wall a month ago.

“I came in earlier, sir, but you were still asleep so I thought you could use some tea,” she explains, carefully pouring one cup to the brim with hot water.

“And coffee...thank you very much.” He doesn’t touch the latter cup however, and his gaze travels pointedly from the drink to the girl who brought it.

“The carriage driver was late when I left the magistrate’s house yesterday. I was given some extra coin so I spent it in the marketplace.”

Mikasa tells him this mechanically, as if she were reciting the details of a completed mission, but it doesn’t go unnoticed by Erwin how her voice hovers tremulously at the mention of “coin.”

She doesn’t look angry or accusing, which he almost wants her to be, or ashamed, which would make the current self-loathing rising in him surge even more. She looks simply like she’s trying to not unravel, like the first time he saw her across a courtroom half demanding her death along with her brother’s, a girl entrenched in the games of men.

_Accuse me_ , he thinks. _Voice aloud what I’ve done to you._

Instead, she makes an attempt to defuse the gravity of what she’s just recounted. “You should drink the coffee while it’s still hot. I left the rest of the brew downstairs in the mess, and everyone else will have drained the pot dry.”

Irrationally, he feels a flare of frustration at her calmness, at the front she puts up like she’s reporting on objectives to satisfy her superior officer.

“Ackerman, I don’t really care about the damn coffee.” His voice comes out harsher than he intends, and he tries to rein in that show of temper as he searches for the words to ask the many questions dancing madly in his head. It’s not his most eloquent of days. “Tell me truthfully, are you alright?”

Alright could mean a lot of things, he realizes and wonders if the term is too vague. _Did he hurt you?_

Mikasa hesitates only briefly before answering steadily, “Yes, sir, I’m alright. Everything went smoothly.”

In a way, Erwin knows that already. Half of the fatigue in his body comes from his impulsive decision yesterday to take his own horse and ride into Karanese District himself on the pretense of official business. Like the majority of upper-class citizenry, Alec Holden had his primary residence in the capital city, but he owned another house outside the inner walls, and it was to the latter that he’d invited the young cadet. Erwin wasn’t ignorant of where that house was located, had dismounted from his horse in the square across from it so that the edifice was perfectly visible where he stood, not even sure what he was waiting to see. With so many members of the MP leisurely patrolling the streets, he had quickly been accosted into half-hearted conversation with a couple of Nile’s friends that recognized him. He had kept an eye on that house though, had spoken to the men in a manner he was sure came across as cold and borderline rude until the corner of his vision caught sight of a girl slipping out of the magistrate’s back door.

“And now I would like to have my scarf back,” Mikasa says, interrupting his recollection of how long yesterday had felt. “Please.”

“Of course.” He pulls out the accessory along with her cardigan from his drawer, and there’s a ruddiness in her cheeks as she spots the latter item.

As Mikasa reaches across the desk for the transfer of belongings, Erwin catches her hand. “I’m sorry. For yesterday, for what happened even before that, but also for how insufficient an apology is. As your commanding officer, I should never have facilitated such a transgression that goes so far beyond what you are supposed to give. You’re here as a soldier. I don’t expect you to fulfill any other role.”

“This should never have happened in the first place, and it shouldn’t happen again,” he continues, wishing that she would look at him. “If the magistrate asks again, I will write to turn him down.”

She studies their joined hands, flexes hers in his a little. “If he asks again,” she repeats. “Well, let’s wait and see.”

 

* * *

  

Paid like a whore.

Mikasa hadn’t fully registered what the magistrate placed in her hands until fully off the man’s property and into the broad avenue that bordered it.

“A treat for just you, my girl,” she remembered him saying. “Something you won’t have to share with the rest of the company. And don’t worry about the Legion’s share. Your Commander will find that his credit with merchants has greatly increased the next time he comes to town for supplies.”

A gleam of sunlight had bounced off of the coin. Gold. Stamped with King Fritz’s rather weak-chinned and uninspiring profile. She’d fought the urge to vomit as she sought out where the carriage was parked, but the driver had apparently wandered off instead of waiting.

So Mikasa had walked around Karanese District, her skin crawling with the desire to have a bath and rid herself of the stench of the magistrate’s perfume, which still seemed to pervade her senses. Gradually, she’d noticed how colorful the houses in that neighborhood were, some constructed out of rosy brick, some painted in cheerful shades of pastel, and numerous windows fringed with flower-boxes. Fittingly bedecked, she supposed, for one of the wealthiest towns attached to Wall Rose.

In her dazed wandering, she’d found herself on one of the bridges overlooking a canal. Had considered tossing the coin into the water. Natural pragmatism took over though, and she had turned her feet back to the marketplace.

She had dipped her hand into a small sack of coffee beans at a merchant’s behest, buying it half out of curiosity and half for the aroma. And then there had been a few other purchases. A couple of books that she knew Armin and Eren would both appreciate. Soft as well hard candies for Sasha and the others. A spool of red thread for herself to mend the holes she’d recently discovered in her scarf.

Mikasa’s last stop had been at a peddler’s stall, her eyes content in drifting over all of the different types of jewelry civilian women apparently could wear.

Then the vendor had smiled at her. “I’ve never seen a girl like you around here before. If anything catches your eye, just tell me, and we might be able to negotiate a more favorable price.”

Her stare had been immediate and deathly cold, provoking the man into apology.

She’d waited out the rest of the driver’s absence in the carriage.

 

* * *

 

Ackerman has barely touched her plate, but she’s drank more than enough in Erwin’s opinion.

In a week, they are scheduled to head out to scout around an abandoned village in the former territory of Wall Maria. It’s not intended to be a full expedition, but it is a crucial part in the line he plans to draw in order to eventually reach Shiganshina. Erwin has been strict with their regiment cook on rationing out the recent supplies, but he knows that the freshness of food isn’t infinite so tonight, he allows for a laxer diet.

The bread buns on the table don’t need to be bashed open like eggs for once; they break apart, warm and fragrant with bits of raisin and spice baked inside some, the luxury of pats of butter beside the plainer scones. There’s a stew with chunks of beef and carrot that are actually discernible, a few savory meat pies, a whole honey-basted roast originally reserved for just the officers’ table but being cut apart to pass along to the new recruits as well.

Erwin feels no appetite, none at all at this rare abundance.

“Alright, 6-2,” Levi says. “There’s no way you can power that body of yours to head a charge outside the walls next week if you don’t eat. So please, for all of our sakes, start chowing.”

Erwin manages, not quite to the Corporal’s satisfaction, to finish off some of his plate. Since drinking the coffee Ackerman had brought to him, everything seems to have acquired a bitter taste in his mouth.

“Is this a new tradition?” Levi asks him. “Feasting before the slaughter? Where did we get the coin for this anyway? The last time I saw butter, I was filching it from some nobleman’s stores.”

The Commander doesn’t answer. The Corporal and Mikasa have reached some semblance of civility and cooperation between them recently, sort of, and the last thing Erwin wants is to tell Levi that his new protege is the one gaining them access to the influx of resources.

His eyes can’t help but return to the table where most of the 104th trainees are clustered, to the girl who seems to have eaten more sparingly than he has.

Mikasa has been drinking though. He’s seen a cup in her hands more often than not throughout the meal, and the now visible flush in her cheeks tells him that it’s not water she downs so liberally.

In the Legion, drinking is not an uncommon habit; it’s not the worst. He brings scotch and other whiskies to his own office often enough to unwind. It’s just a little hard to forget how the last time he’d seen Mikasa drink, she had followed up by grinding on his lap.

And apparently, alcohol does make her more inclined to do uncharacteristic things because she stands up, tries to hide her slight waver, and after some convincing, allows Jean Kirschstein to accompany her out of the hall. It’s something that her brother probably would have leapt up in protest over in normal circumstances, but Eren has moved to the Special Ops circle to listen intently to Levi’s narration of a past mission while Armin is deep in conversation with Hange, and Erwin is sure that he’s the only one so observant to who Mikasa left with.

It’s not something to worry about, not really. The sane part of his mind is surer than ever that Mikasa could benefit by bridging out from her attachment to Jaeger and Arlert and that one way of doing so would be through a relationship with someone her own age, someone who is young enough to not be emotionally deficient.

She told him a while ago that she had no need for a babysitter, but he feels responsible for the girl, and it’s responsibility, Erwin persuades himself, that stimulates him to get up and follow.

He finds her, by accident, in one of the courtyards he passes through; it’s a mixture of relief and melancholy to find her alone, sitting on the stone edge of a horses’ watering trough.

“I hope you didn’t come out here to retch,” he says, coming to stand in front of her.

A dry burst of laughter escapes her. “I’ve felt like retching for the past week.”

He’s not quite sure if he can trust himself to place a hand on her shoulder, to comfort. “You can’t dwell on what’s happened with Holden. It’s his sin, not yours. It doesn’t change who you are.”

“I _feel_ different though. But no one knows, not yet, just you.” Her hand, absent-mindedly skimming the surface of the water, pauses. “Do _you_ see me differently?”

“No,” Erwin lies, and he thinks for all of the lying he does, it should be easier to convince an inebriated teenager. “Not at all. You are still as much an outstanding cadet as you were when you entered the Corps.”

She stands suddenly, not completely straight but angled slightly to the side, and he feels unbalanced as Mikasa leans forward, her hair grazing his chin.

“Can I tell you something?” Her whisper, barely more than a breath against his neck, brings him back to how close she had brought her body to his that night they came together, and he feels again like she’s telling him a secret he desperately wants to hear.

“The first thing the magistrate wanted me to do was touch myself. Just lift up my skirt and touch myself. Easy enough, right?”

Erwin’s listening. He can’t help but listen, even though rationality is telling him he should back away from the press of her body and find someone to take the girl to her room. And then in the morning, they would return to the roles that divide them, two almost-strangers who have nothing to share but mission reports and professional appreciation.

Except what she says pivots his thoughts entirely.

“I tried. But I was moving so stiffly, and it wasn’t quite working. It made me worry that I wasn’t entertaining enough for him. So then, can you guess what I did?"

"I thought of you," she tells him. "I leaned back, and I thought of everything you did to me - behind me - on your knees --”

It’s she who puts distance between them, taking a step back to be able to look him in the eyes. “I don’t regret asking you, not one single bit.”

“Mikasa?” Her brother and Arlert emerge from one of the corridors into the courtyard, and ordinarily, Erwin would worry more about how this scene, his standing so close to the third member of their trio, appears to those on the outside. He can’t bother with that though, not right now, and he says in strained politeness,

“Could you two please escort Miss Ackerman to her room? I think it’s best she go to bed.”

He heads off in the opposite direction for his own bed, but what he does instead of lying down is bolt the door and stagger into his washroom. Alone and no one to witness the effect of the girl’s words on him. His body thrumming with the urge to shed all dignity, Erwin unfastens only the belts necessary with practiced hands and braces a forearm against the wall as he begins to move.

And it’s so easy, too easy to recall that dusky pink, glazed as he’d kissed the cove at the inlet of her legs.

That image elicits another: the topography of her abdomen, ridges and dips, her waist incurvated as she’d struggled for breath on his desk. A feast from his vantage point. His groin tightens at remembering how his eyes had traveled further up, ensnared by her arching towards him and the forceful upthrust of her breasts, buttermilk flesh crested with nips of coral.

It isn’t his first time thinking of Ackerman like this. At his desk, Erwin’s surrendered before to his hand and memory, craving to coax life into something and thereby escape the papers detailing how many have fallen.

It’s different though. Because as much as he’s accustomed to rousing men to battle through articulated speech, he’s never quite allowed someone else’s words to stoke a fire in him. Certainly not one like this. But Ackerman’s confession of what went on behind the magistrate’s doors is all he hears over the uproar of blood pumping in his veins.

Her voice wet against his jugular. _I leaned back, and I thought of you._

He imagines her inclining backwards, not quite horizontal, hands tentatively seeking out her own folds and moving faster as she retraced where his fingers and mouth had trailed.

_I thought of you._

His body pitches forward in release.

Haggard and drained, he clutches his head against the sink, pleasure overtaken by the shame of his weakness.

 

* * *

 

Two days later, the mood in headquarters is completely changed. Nearly three hundred bodies crammed into their largest assembly room, and everyone is present at the runover of operational tactics when Dita Ness raises his hand to say slowly, “I re-checked our gas reserves this morning. I don’t know exactly what happened because the last shipment from town was full when it arrived, but there must have been some leakage in the tanks that the merchants didn’t notice.”

Human error.

Erwin prepares for it in most cases. There are contingency plans upon plans, but he hasn’t quite foreseen this snag in his web.

“How low?” He hears himself ask over the deafening quiet in the room.

“There won’t be enough for the squad running lateral support on the left flank. Either we’re going to have to cut them out from formation, or we’re going to have to get our hands on more gas to make it through that patch of forest near the outpost.”

Erwin feels the weight of nearly three hundred stares turning towards him as they wait for his decision.

 

* * *

 

“How long did it take you to draw these up?”

Mikasa is in his office, hands roaming the maps and schematics that clutter his desk.

“The better part of a month,” Erwin admits, warily watching her move in his space as if she’s claiming it. He’s avoided being alone with her since the night in the courtyard. “Had to decipher a whole notebook of Hange’s notes and sketches from our last venture, but your friend Arlert has been very helpful with that.”

She seems to be searching his desk for something. At last, she unearths a blank sheet beneath the other papers and places it in front of him.

“And how long do you think it takes for me to please the magistrate?” She slides a pen into his frozen grip, pushing an inkwell to the side of his arm.

“We’re not going to cut the left flank,” Mikasa tells him.

“Write to Holden.”

 

* * *

 

When she comes out of the magistrate’s house, it’s already dusk, swathes of rose and indigo wrapping the sky. The carriage driver is nowhere to be found again. She finds the vehicle parked in the alleyway where it dropped her off and climbs inside to wait for the coachman’s return.

When the door unexpectedly wrenches open, Mikasa blinks, disbelieving, at the eyes that meet hers. Glacial blue, like the ice over lakes in winter. A color that should feel mild but instead sets her on guard, every sense sharpened and wary of misstep, of plunging.

“What are you doing here?”

“I had last-minute business in town. Are you alright?”

“That seems incredibly stupid. How could you risk tiring out your horse like that when we’re supposed to head outside the walls in a few days?” A surge of resentment rises in Mikasa at seeing Erwin here, at him seeing her. She’s never wandered out to the brothels with some of the other Scouts, but she’s pretty sure that this time, she actually looks like a whore, her mouth brushed red with cosmetic and wine in addition to her dress pulled lower than the last one’s modest cut.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I’m alright, I’m fine.”

There’s something in the Commander’s stern gaze that makes her spiteful in that moment, and she says with an edge in her voice,

“What? Are you disappointed that you missed the show? Maybe you and Holden have some preferences in common.”

They stare at each other with hard eyes. And then Erwin is pushing himself inside the carriage, slamming the door shut behind him. His lips are on hers before she can even ask what he’s doing, kissing her like he wants to break her.

Mikasa doesn’t quite let him do it, her mouth skating away, nipping at his when it chases her. But she didn’t kiss him last time, and she hadn’t imagined that he could kiss like this, almost too forceful to be categorized as what she thought a kiss should be.

So she traps his bottom lip between hers, tugging and beseeching that he slow down. Just a little.

Erwin’s mouth is slower as it slides down, but it’s a still a hot brand against her neck, over the bare curving lines from her throat to her shoulder that hardly anyone ever sees. She’s not surprised when he bites her in a reflection of where she marked him, but it provokes a gush of wetness between her legs, her body eager now, hips jerking against one of his hands.

His fingers move to pull at the hem of her dress.

“Wait, wait --”

He stops, pulling away, a departure of body heat and pressure. If her mind were more clear-headed, Mikasa would’ve laughed at his dishevelment, at the clench of that strong jaw, the blond locks falling slightly into his eyes where she sees frustration but also some shock at himself and the returning veil of control.

She doesn’t want that, doesn’t want any barrier at all between them in this moment, but she manages to explain a little breathlessly, “I don’t feel clean. I need to wash first.”

“I am the last person in the world thinking of you as dirty,” he cuts her off, and his size makes it difficult for him to be anywhere but pressed between the cradle of her legs as he kneels. “Can I…?”

She nods, and he delves, expecting a thatch of hair to meet his fingers again, but all he feels instead are twin bulges of smooth, smooth softness with a hint of silken fold along the parting seam.

“I -- I had to follow the magistrate’s preferences,” Mikasa says, looking at him like she expects him to pull away again.

His fist gathers the fabric of her dress, scrunching it up past her thighs to reveal the slick rosy lips of her sex that he had re-imagined by himself. Erwin fits his mouth there, fills all he can taste with her until pearly liquid trickles onto the cushioned seat.

Her shaking hands reach down to pull him up and over her with urgent force. The backseat of the carriage doesn’t offer much room, and it’s not exactly comfortable fixing her limbs to half-recline under him, but neither of them stop, both pairs of hands busying with his straps and buttons.

“Come on, old man,” Mikasa breathes into his ear, and the term makes him freeze. She’s more than strong enough to pull him down, cleaving into her.

The incredible tight heat seizing around his cock feels like a tongue of fire, a flame devouring wild grass in how quickly the pleasure spreads and fans out. His eyes drink in the vision of her, lying back like a queen, pride and not a little defiance in her matching gaze. His appreciation lingers at her bare, shaved mound, where it parts, stretches really, to take him in. She wiggles, playfully bold, and he thinks he might be hardening even more at watching how her folds drag along his shaft, clinging before sliding him half out.

He’s not a mentor tutoring her in desire for another man anymore. This time, Erwin takes her for himself, pushing in so deeply golden hair dusts her mound. Hunched over Mikasa and cupping her bottom to lift in his hands, he’s not gentle as he fucks into her.

She’s always wondered what Erwin would be like when the plastic construction of his facial composure is burnt away, and now she knows. This is a man she hasn’t fully seen yet, definitely not in his office or even in the field where he is all calculation. She wants to memorize how open his actions and body are to her in this moment, how honest and aggressive the look of want on his face is. Tomorrow, Mikasa can imagine that she’ll be cursing herself for being so reckless, for the likely pain below, but he’s chasing away those inconvenient thoughts with every carving thrust. It’s absurd, she thinks to herself dazedly, to feel empty where her body is a natural void, but he extracts a moan from her every time he pulls out only to sink thickly back through her swollen folds. The glide between them is so wet and greased that eventually, he doesn’t leave her body at all, just stays between her angled thighs to fill her with increasing rhythm.

All she can hear in the small enclosed space is the lurid slap of skin as their hips meld and the noises he jars out of her. As the ascending wave threatens to overwhelm, her hands desperately climb to cover her mouth, afraid of being too loud just a corner away from a public square, but he’s there suddenly as well, his forehead sweat-slicked against her brow, his breath capturing hers to hold it between them.

“Do you know what?” Erwin says hoarsely, cheek sliding against cheek. “After that night in the courtyard, I thought of what you said -- thought of you too. Of how you looked, still prim as you rode me. And of how you would look if I had taken you on the desk. But this -- this I have to admit was beyond my imagination. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop thinking of you like this.”

His actions carried her to the peak, but it’s his words that send her over it. The flash of white behind her eyelids has Mikasa gripping hard onto his strong shoulders, the sensation so fierce that it blurs between pleasure and pain. Above her, Erwin still moves, pumping into her constricting sheath, even tighter now, and it’s insane how the doubling pace of his strokes stir in her another spark of arousal, an urge for more.

Mikasa flexes her calves around the breadth of his waist and whispers into his ear, “You want something else to think about? Then come. I want you to come inside of me.”

His eyes are wide as they frantically search hers, but then he closes them, his groan a bass vibration that pulses to her belly. He ruts deep and hard to release, his come joining hers, as she’d commanded.

 

* * *

 

In perhaps a minute, he will pull out of her and repair the facade of hierarchy between them. In a few hours, she’ll hopefully be returned to headquarters, washed and tucked between her boys to read a chapter of the book she brought them. In two days, he will be riding at the head of formation to whatever now lies beyond humanity’s reduced borders.

  
For now though, as the moisture slowly evaporates off her cooling body like morning dew, Mikasa doesn’t regret how she fits underneath him.

 

After all, neither of them have much time for regret. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It still takes me forever to get to the 'kink' part of kink meme prompt.


	5. when its last restraint is gone

“I didn’t know you were so bookish.”

For the most part, the Commander’s room is a spartan environment. The furniture is plain and carved of unembellished butternut, nothing as fine as the varnished mahogany desk in his office. One woven rug, fibers dyed in the same pine green shade as the Scouting Legion’s cloaks, adds some warmth to the room, but there are no other decorative furnishings. There are however many books. Too great in number to all be shelved, the books spill out all over the room. Some short stacks on the floor, a taller pile on the nightstand, even a book tucked partly beneath one of the pillows as if the reader had drowsed off while absorbing its contents. For a moment, Mikasa thinks of how Armin’s face would light up at seeing such a room, but that excited thought quickly fades away. She couldn’t tell Armin why she had seen the inside of the Commander’s room after all.

Still leaning against the doorway, Erwin watches her taking in his room. She had been inside once before to sneak to the washroom, but it had been dark that time whereas now, two candles illuminate the room in a dim golden light.

“My father was a schoolteacher,” he replies finally, thinking of how there are even more books that she doesn’t see. Books that he has taken care to shelter in locked drawers, underneath more innocuous belongings. “When I was younger, I once thought of becoming a teacher as well. I eventually lost that aspiration, but I never lost my fondness for reading everything I could get my hands on.”

“A teacher,” Mikasa muses, her fingers tracing the spine of one story that looks familiar. Armin had read to her and Eren something similar long, long ago. “I doubt I would ever have met you if you had become a teacher. My parents took it upon themselves to educate me at home.”

“You never wanted to go to school?”

Opening the book and studying the map within the first few pages, Mikasa says distractedly, “Oh, I wanted to go as a child, but we lived quite far away from the nearest one. I don’t think that was really what stopped my parents from taking me though. Looking back, I think they wanted to hide away from other people.”

“I could see why they wanted to do so,” Erwin comments, thinking of the reports he had read on her, of how the group of men who had burst into the Ackerman home had sought the mother and daughter as human merchandise.

Erwin crosses the room to stand behind her, watching her delve a little further into the book.

“I can feel your eyes,” she says dryly. “I can’t exactly read while you’re right behind me.”

“Oh I’m sorry, did we come up here to read?” he teases, his hands encircling her waist to bring her body against the press of his.

They had been blessed to count themselves among the survivors of the sojourn outside Wall Maria, returning two days ago, weighted down with awareness of those who didn’t have the fortune of returning. And just when Mikasa had begun to think that they were finished with each other again, someone had told her that the Commander wanted to see her. She had gone to Erwin’s office and hadn’t resisted when he guided her to his bedroom instead.

“I don’t think you would’ve been a very good teacher,” she comments, leaning into his solid frame at her back and arching a little as his hands begin to wander.

“Oh, why’s that?”

“I for one wouldn’t have been able to concentrate in your classroom.” Her voice ends breathily as one of the Commander’s hands slides past her waistband.

“Then I would’ve helped you concentrate,” he murmurs, biting gently into the sensitive lobe of her ear to induce a shiver in the girl. “With extra attention.” His other hand, not occupied in her pants, molds itself to the curve of her rear, kneading her with increasing force until she feels it keenly despite the layers of clothing. She’s still more distracted by his hand in the front though, and by how it’s pushed aside her underwear to skim her moistening cleft.

“In any case,” Erwin says, his mouth moving over the milky skin where her throat meets shoulder, a terrain he feels quite possessive of whenever Ackerman isn’t wearing her scarf. “I think you would have been an excellent student, no matter the situation.”

“Sir,” she whispers, slowly losing her ability to keep up with the game. “I’d still call you Sir if you were my teacher.”

“Of course, it’s only proper.”

He enters her with a finger, adding another and a third in quick succession, and it’s not nearly as much as having his cock but she spasms a little at having her quim breached so suddenly. Haltingly, Mikasa begins to roll her rear against him, repeating how she’d moved on him the first time.

He brings her to her first orgasm while they’re both still standing, he more truly upright than her. Laying her down on the bed and shifting over her, Erwin leans down to kiss her, the stone of his loosened bolo tie grazing her neck. She finds herself gradually unbuttoned and overwhelmed, suffering heady intoxication at his hands and mouth. Torturously, his tongue trails hot on all of her most sensitive points until the contours of her lips are tingling, the tips of her nipples aching, and the smooth inlet between her legs helplessly weeping wet, sodden noises against his nuzzling jaw. Blindly, Mikasa reaches out, climbing up his still clothed thigh to feel the outline of the bulge he presses into her hand.

With a broken off groan, Erwin sits back on his haunches, quickly shedding his jacket and shirt, revealing an expanse of skin she realizes she hasn’t yet seen. In the dying candlelight, his body is rippled bronze, swells of muscle moving liquidly beneath the surface, his strong musculature undeniably prominent. Looking up at him, she studies the sculpted breadth of his shoulders, the sharp cut of his pelvic bones, the golden trail of hair dusting from his navel, and the marks that his profession has left on his skin over the years. Mikasa is not unfamiliar with the bruises deriving from regular maneuver gear use, but on her body, they’re still relatively light. On Erwin however, the crisscrossing bands of reddish discoloration below his clavicle and around his thighs appear to have grown into permanence. The Commander doesn’t lack in other types of scars either. Lifting her hand, Mikasa gently traces the line running across his sternum, imprinted there from the forceful haul of the gear’s harness strap. Tugging him down by the string of the bolo tie, she’s gratified by the hard slide of his chest against hers, the full weight of his body slightly alleviated by the arm he braces against her side.

“I don’t think anyone would confuse you for a schoolteacher,” she whispers before rolling herself on top of him, a little smug in showing off a move that Levi had taught her a week ago during sparring practice. Erwin lies back and lets her, his pupils dilated but his eyes still bright with amused curiosity as she begins to move. Mikasa starts with the bruises encircling his shoulders, her contact with his skin girlishly chaste and closed-mouthed at first, just brushing her lips here and there with teasing lightness. As she moves further down his body to re-create the path he’d made on hers, she opens her mouth to kiss and taste, flicking her tongue at the puckered edges of his scars. Beneath her, she feels the Commander’s abdomen hollow out at the sides with his deep inhaling breath and a push of his hips towards hers. Hungry for friction, Mikasa slips one leg over his, pressing down to grind her wet sex against his thigh. Watching her with irises nearly swallowed up by their dark center, Erwin grasps her by the hips, helping her into a rhythm as she continues to slide, hot and moist, along his muscled thigh.

“I’m starting to believe that you prefer riding to being ridden,” he says, thinking of how she’d climbed on top of him that first night in his office. Her fingers are still roaming though, one following a bruise veering low past his hips, and his words come out short on breath.

Mikasa meets his gaze, her eyes heavy-lidded and partially obscured by the dark locks of hair falling into her face. “After this,” she tells him. “After this, you’ll get your turn and you can take me whatever way you want.”

She manages to divert enough air to laugh as Erwin arches an intrigued eyebrow at her. He doesn’t hesitate to help her along, adding to her urgency with his fingers.

Flushed all over and panting, Mikasa comes for the second time, slumping boneless onto his chest. She buries her face at the juncture of his neck and shoulders, his scent natural and clean to her compared to all the strange aromatic smells that filled her experiences with the magistrate. Erwin runs his warm hands soothingly over her shivering form for a few moments, but she isn’t surprised when he turns her over to lay underneath him again.

“Whatever I want?” Erwin repeats, nudging her legs apart with the same thigh she’d just ridden to graze her still sensitive cleft.

“Something new at least,” she replies, squirming away slightly, not that there’s anywhere to hide between the press of his body and the mattress at her back. “Teach me something new.”

He does, and the last thing she’s aware of is that the candle flame has burned itself out by the time they’re done.

 

* * *

 

There’s a plant, Erwin learns from Ilse Langnar, whose seeds can be broken to emit an oil and a powdery meal. The latter, she tells him, can be separated from the oil to be used as a poison.

Originally, he was supposed to meet with Hange to go over notes from their most recent trip outside the walls, but the squad leader, who apparently had more important experiments on her plate, had sent a younger scout in her stead. Initially annoyed, Erwin now looks down at Ilse’s presentation of sketches and notebooks with greater interest at hearing this tidbit of information.

“Poison?”

“Yes, sir. My father practiced herbal medicine back in our hometown, and this species was fairly common in the mountains where I grew up, but I never saw it again until we ventured outside of Wall Rose last week.” Ilse explains. “The toxicity ranges depending on the number of seeds ingested.”

The Scout, Erwin notes, took excellent sketches, including not only the plant’s leaves and flowers but also its bean-like capsule seeds.

“Does Squad Leader Hange always ask you to take note of poisons?”

“She told me to use my judgment, sir,” Ilse answers. “And to report to her whenever I discover something that could be useful to her experiments.”

“So what advantages does this plant have over others that made it worthy of note in your eyes?” Erwin asks her, making sure to keep his smile relaxed.

“Well, from what I remember of my father’s journals, the poison is essentially tasteless, especially if dissolved in any liquid substance. I don’t know if this would be an advantage to Miss Hange’s work, but it’s also slow in producing symptoms.” Pausing, Ilse looks uncertainly at the Commander and asks tentatively, “May I ask, sir, why this is of interest to you?”

“Purely curiosity’s sake,” Erwin says smoothly. “My father was a teacher, and he passed onto me some of his interests in herbology.”

There’s a thought in Erwin’s mind, more of a bud of a thought, but his father had taught him, among other things, to recognize the potential in the trivial. ‘No grain of knowledge,’ his father had told him, ‘is truly insignificant.’

“One last thing, Ilse. Did you happen to acquire any samples while we were outside the walls?”

 

* * *

 

To anyone who knows Jaeger and Ackerman, it’s not an unfamiliar scene.

The boy wants to do something, and she wants to follow. Desperately wants to go wherever he does.

Levi is adamant that she stays put. “Did I somehow miss your promotion, Ackerman? Because I’m pretty sure I’ve repeated myself twice now. You are not part of the Special Operations Squad, and you will not be accompanying an operation that solely belongs to this squad. Assuming that you can do a better job protecting Jaeger than all of us combined is not only a show of extreme arrogance on your part but also a severe miscalculation considering how emotionally compromised you are at all times around him.”

They’re part of a small group gathered in Erwin’s office, and Mikasa apparently cares not at all for being ashamed in front of everyone else because she opens her mouth to argue fervently again. Eren stops her this time, and his eyes are blazen green as he takes the Corporal’s side against hers.

“Mikasa, the last thing I need is for you to be babysitting me on this mission!” Eren asserts, directly facing her, his voice sounding as frantic as hers did. “I’ve been working on these transformations for a month now. I can do this without you there.”

Deep down, she knows this already. Despite her skills, she knows with a wretched aching heart that Eren does not need her at all to harness and unleash the still-mysterious ability flowing through his veins. She hates how that knowledge burns, bringing stinging moisture to her eyes. With a sharp turn that nearly topples the person next to her, Mikasa leaves the room, unwilling to humiliate herself further in a fight that seems futile.

 

* * *

 

“I’ll go after her.”

Two other variations of Eren’s words spill out at the same time, and the boy looks confusedly at both the Commander and the Corporal who uttered them.

“Um, it’s fine,” Eren says. “She's like a sister to me, and well, it was me who really upset her. I just didn’t realize she would take it that badly.”

Standing, Erwin flashes a polite smile at the boy and moves out from behind his desk. “An appreciated overture, Eren, but I think it would be best if I had a talk with Cadet Ackerman about respecting the judgment of her superiors when it comes to operational assignments.”

“Oh, alright. Thank you, sir. Are you sure though? I should really talk to her anyway about all this….” Eren trails off.

“It’s fine. You’re all dismissed, and the assignment stays as it is.”

Erwin is the first to leave his office, reminding himself to keep his pace calm and measured as Levi’s eyes brush over him, narrowed in suspicion.

It’s not as easy to find Ackerman this time as it was that night in the courtyard, but Erwin knows every corner of headquarters as well as the back of his hand by now, eventually locating the girl on a narrow strip of terrace at the east end. Mikasa looks like she really is going to retch this time, leaning over the crenellated walls. Her back straightens rigidly at his approach, and she glances over her shoulder before turning away again. It’s disappointment, he reads in her face, probably because he isn’t Jaeger.

Erwin lets her be for a few silent moments, and finally she says to his surprise, “Have you ever been in love with someone?”

From the trembling timbre of her voice and the preceding confrontation between adoptive siblings in his office, Erwin knows instantly that she’s not referring to him.

“Yes,” he tells her honestly. “I was around your age, maybe a little older. I hadn’t yet chosen the Scouting Legion.”

Mikasa takes in his words and after a beat, asks, “How did you know?”

It’s been a long time, Erwin thinks, but he can still recall details that range from vibrantly clear to faint. Honey-colored hair that curled, abundant and richly spilling onto freckled shoulders. A voice that had always sounded sweet. Marie had been a civilian though, was one still even if she was now married to the head of the Military Police. Marie, he contemplates, was nothing like the girl who stood before him.

“I knew,” he says slowly. “Because I could seriously imagine taking a different path than the one I set out on and having a future with her instead.”

Twisting around, Mikasa looks at him, and it’s evident that the shimmer on her cheeks is from the tracks of tears.

“Everyone thinks I’m some kind of lovesick child,” she says. “And I don’t know if they’re right or not.”

She turns away from him again, and her next words are carried off by the wind, but Erwin thinks to himself later that he caught Eren's name tangled in her throat.

 

* * *

 

“You haven’t answered any of my letters recently, Commander.”

Alec Holden is blocking the door of the conference room, and Erwin would really love for nothing more than to shove the wretched man aside, but various members of the government and the military are still milling around. The magistrate lets them trickle out to his side, but he doesn’t move from Erwin’s path. With the room gradually resounding empty and silent at his back, Erwin becomes keenly aware that there are only two people left in addition to himself and the magistrate. At the corner of his vision, he sees Levi, looking back at him with worry. Behind the Corporal, tucked into the shadows, stands the magistrate’s personal valet. Erwin notes how the man’s hand is placed at his hip though and doubts that the man is a true valet near any vague approximation of the term.

“Really, Alec? You’re going to threaten me in a government building?”

Alec Holden’s smile is broad and shameless. “You think a public setting is protection, Erwin?” The magistrate shakes his head. “In this district, I _am_ the government.”

Levi walks forward, his face a storm but still a cautiously tempered one. “Erwin, this is pointless. We should leave.”

Clicking his tongue, Alec glances slyly towards the Corporal and then past him to the dark corner of the room where his valet stands, silent as stone. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking, Levi. For someone who’s so used to getting what he wants through force, you’re thinking you can just resort to that and walk out of here.”

“Yes, I am,” Levi hisses. “And I doubt your man over there could stop us.”

“Oh, I partly agree,” the magistrate says, and his smile is still a hideous thing. Briefly, Erwin wonders how Mikasa ever could have withstood more than a few minutes with the man.

“Glanton over there probably wouldn’t be able to stop you in the very end,” Alec continues. “But he’d damn well make sure that you wouldn’t get out of here without any scrapes either. And you know why? He comes from the same brood as you do, Levi. Straight from the tutelage of Kenny Ackerman. In that sense, he’s more of a brother to you than any Legion member.”

Five paces away, Erwin tenses at the open shock and anger on Levi’s face at hearing that name from his past. Intuitively, Erwin suspects that the magistrate's taunts are only about to get worse.

“Oh, and since you seem to be out of the loop, _Corporal_ ,” Alec says, placing mocking emphasis on the title. “Let me disclose to you what your Commander has been trading with me.”

Erwin unclenches his jaw, harsh words ready at the tip of his tongue, but the magistrate sharply holds up a hand and sneers, “Don’t try to glib your way out of this one, Smith. Because yes, that’s the correct term for it, _trading_. Or should I say _sharing_?”

Twisting to address Levi again, the magistrate says with transparent glee, “You see, we made a deal earlier this year, Erwin and I. He’d give me access to that sweet little Oriental pussy within your ranks, and in return, I would make sure that all of your miserable mouths were thrown some morsels and that your suicide missions were sufficiently fueled.”

The brunt of Levi’s gaze is an arrow in Erwin’s direction, but neither of them speak as the magistrate volleys his words back towards the Commander.

“And it was all going so well, a nice easy transaction for both sides. But then, the Commander here stopped answering my letters one day, and I couldn’t figure out why. Not until one of my household coachmen mentioned to me the scandalous sight he came across before taking Miss Ackerman home. At last, I understand why you were so reluctant to give me the girl from the start, Erwin. Turns out you didn’t want to share. What? Were you so concerned that I would stretch out that tight young cunt too --”

The Commander’s fist thrusts forward to clench around a handful of gold chain links, choking the magistrate with the decorative symbol of his rank.

“Enough,” Erwin tells him, lifting the makeshift noose slightly so that the magistrate’s feet leave the floor for a moment. “Levi, we’re going.”

The man from the shadows finally steps out, and immediately, Levi’s hand flies to his own belt, a flash of steel blurring fast to anyone’s eyes.

“No, no Glanton,” Alec says hoarsely, massaging his throat with one hand and waving the man back with the other. “Let them leave. I think the Commander and his dog got the message.”

He flicks a finger at the bolo tie around Erwin’s neck, and his voice is no longer full of false cheer but instead awash with icy warning.

“I suggest you answer my next summons, Commander Smith. I highly suggest it, or I’ll make sure that little bitch ends up the same way her mother did. And don’t think that humanity’s strongest over here will stop me because I’ll be bringing a friend and the whole First Interior Squad to take a turn on her. Seeing as how they share the same surname and all, I’m sure Kenny will be more than interested in meeting Mikasa.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was supposed to be the end....
> 
> but most likely it won't be.


	6. pleasure past and anguish past

 

Erwin remembers how Levi looked at him when they first met. Even with his face shoved literally into the mud, the slits of Levi’s eyes had remained contemptuous as if he were the one with a boot pressing down on someone’s throat.

“Scouting Legion. Military Police.” Levi had spat before baring his teeth. “It doesn’t matter what cloak you wear. You’re all the same filth underneath.”

It’s been a long time since Levi has looked at him that way, but the searing potency of that glare still feels as hostile as a blade nicking flesh and threatening to cut deeper. They’re no longer in Holden’s presence, but Levi is a far more condemning judge in any case.

“After the trial,” the Corporal says in a low, furious tone. “You went on and on about how we needed to gain Eren’s trust.”

“That was and still is a priority — ,”

“Then what the hell was that back there?” Levi snarls, the usually set frown of his mouth dismantled by unleashed anger. “What Holden just said. Is that how you went about it? Making backroom deals and prostituting Ackerman out to swine like that?”

It’s the truth. A cold, hard and accusatory truth. Erwin has never ran from confrontation with reality, but his hands curl at his sides, the skin prickling as if all the grime and sin has finally risen up to the surface, the rot of his deeds magnified and exposed.

Levi’s not finished with dispensing the full bite of his words either. “I knew something was up, but this….I thought you weren’t like the other pigs who exploit their rank. You’re the one who’s always spouting lectures against fraternization to the rest of us. Who would have guessed that the upstanding Commander of the Scouting Legion fucks members of the incoming class! You just couldn’t resist taking a few turns on her too?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Erwin says sharply, but he halts himself from saying more and snaps his jaw tightly shut, thinking of the girl who had come to him in secrecy that first embroiling night.

“What? Does my language offend you?” the Corporal demands. “Because those are the exact same words that Holden used, and I would take his threat pretty damn seriously considering who he might involve in this.”

Shoving the larger man aside and stalking past him, Levi warns over his shoulder, “If you truly value the lives of your soldiers, then you better take a good measure of how much risk you’ve placed on Ackerman’s head. Because if Kenny enters the equation, a quick death at the hands of a titan would be preferable for her.”

Cold fingers grasping at air, Erwin thinks fleetingly of the scarf Mikasa once left in his care.

And how much the memory of it now feels like a noose.

 

* * *

 

The letter from Holden comes with new instructions: Bring the girl yourself.

_Bring the girl yourself, and no one else has to get involved._

Erwin sits across from Mikasa while she reads it, and when she’s finished, she looks warily at him like they’re strangers again. In recent weeks, he’s perceived a wider spectrum of emotions in her eyes than he ever expected would be revealed to him, but what he glimpses now is more reminiscent of that first meeting in his office when he told her about Holden’s solicitation. Confusion battling with fear tinged by distrust.

The echo of what she said to him chimes through his head.  _What greater trust could I place in a superior?_

_Misplaced trust_ _,_  he thinks to himself, closing his eyes briefly.

“I don’t understand,” Mikasa says quietly. “Why does he want you to come too?”

“To demonstrate his leverage over both of us, I imagine,” Erwin answers before abruptly pulling open a drawer and searching through its contents. Carefully, he places his find on the desk: a vial of yellowish liquid, the consistency oil-like as fat beads of it cling to the sides with his movements.

That time he had confronted her in the carriage and taken her right there, he had noticed how that small enclosed space was thickly permeated with perfume, how even the musk of her had smelled differently. When they had finished, she had flushed at his question about it and murmured that the magistrate requested her to use specific gels and oils.

He’s thought of a half-dozen other ways to deploy Ilse’s collected venom such as dusting his return letter to Holden with the plant’s crushed powder form, but the simple matter of the fact is that ingestion always works best. Then there are other factors to consider: discretion, timing, the certainty of the poison being delivered to the magistrate’s mouth.

“Do you still have the gel Holden gave to you?” Erwin asks.

Her halting nod seals his belief in the plan.

“This is what we’re going to do.”

 

* * *

 

Holden has many preferences: girls shaved, garbed in the clothes he’s chosen, and slicked with the scent of rosewater until their essence is more that of a flower than a girl.

The third time Mikasa travels to the magistrate’s residence, she’s distinctly aware of how much oil has been smeared from her neck to her thighs. Oil and poison and sleeping draught, mingled in a precise ratio. They can’t afford to kill someone as prominent as Alec Holden outright. Being caught for openly murdering the man would mean an arrest, a prison sentence, and more importantly to her, being taken away from Eren and Armin. Nevertheless, during the carriage ride into Karanese District, the satisfying vision of slicing a red line across the magistrate’s neck dances on the back of Mikasa’s eyelids.

Beside her is Erwin, and once, his presence might’ve been a comfort, but now, walking with him towards the magistrate’s house brings just a surge of dread. At the threshold of the residence, Erwin brushes her clenched hand, and she meets his gaze for a brief moment before turning her head away to hide the tremulous lines of her throat. She never wears the scarf when she comes here. Simmering beneath her lashes is a flare of resentment because he’s seen more of her than she ever intended, but it’s blotted out quickly by the return of stony opacity.

“I don’t know exactly what will happen in there,” he tells her honestly. “But I promise you, no matter what happens, this is the last time you will have to look upon that man’s face.”

Her eyes fixed on the magistrate’s painted red door, Mikasa gives him only a deadly soft answer. “No need to make such a promise. If this doesn’t work, I’ll end his miserable life myself.”

 

* * *

 

Alec Holden welcomes them with the facade of a gracious host, offering them freshly prepared fruit as well as wine in crystalline glasses.

It’s a different story inside the man’s bedroom. The valet diligently pats them down, and then they’re sequestered with the magistrate in the richly draped interior. Leaning back against the cushions, Holden smiles at them with malicious intent and gestures at a familiar purple lounge.

“I’m in a generous mood,” he informs them before addressing the Commander directly. “So for the first round, I want to watch you fuck her. Just like you did in that carriage. Because believe me, hearing about you entangled with a subordinate was its own sort of gratification.”

Erwin has already thought out the various possible scenarios since receiving Holden’s letter, and this particular one is not unanticipated either, but Mikasa visibly stiffens at the idea of  _performing_ for the man.

“Don’t bother acting the virgin,” the magistrate sneers at her, and for a moment, her eyes go frighteningly blank. They’re the eyes of a girl who killed at age nine, and Erwin wonders if the plan they’ve agreed upon has thus swiftly unraveled.

But her lids flutter shut, and when they lift up, Mikasa looks merely determined to carry through. Erwin sits down on the couch, and Mikasa has one knee sinking onto the velvet beside him before Holden abruptly calls out, “Now hold it right there. You’re a very confident little minx, aren’t you? You didn’t even bother to check if the Commander here is prepared.”

“Alec —”

“Oh come on, Erwin. I’m doing you a favor. Get down on your knees, girl.”

Nails curling into her palms, Mikasa glances at the door, silently recounting the number of servants and potential obstacles they passed by before entering the room. She could burst out of here, could make it pretty damn far before any consequences are unleashed in chase, but long-term survival is always seared into the back of her mind and she sinks to her knees instead.

Erwin has kissed the core of her several times, but they’ve never done this before. Her fingers move clumsily for once, tugging with forceful jerks at the loops of his belts. He’s not aroused at all considering the situation, and the grim line of Mikasa’s mouth doesn’t lessen the fraught string of tension between them. But then she leans forward, her soft lower cheek brushing against his cock. With a slight turn of her head comes the skimming of lips and breathy vapor, evanescently warm, along his naturally respondent flesh.

“You don’t have to,” Erwin murmurs, bending his head, his hair darkened gold like the plates the magistrate eats off of. “I could just —”

Mikasa slides a palm upwards, and the cords of muscle along his mostly naked thigh tauten like the strings of an instrument tuned by a musician’s touch. She yanks another belt strap down, pulling his pants past the knee, before whispering back,

“I’m not doing it for him. So just let me.”

He feels uncomfortably thick on her tongue when she parts her mouth, and the stifling cough it initially provokes in her leads to Erwin trying to pull away, but she lightly encircles him with her fingers and wets her mouth around his cock again. Under the spread of her other hand is the palpable flex of his thighs as his length grows harder between the slick slide of her lips, and even though she’s had him before, the realization that all this flesh she is preparing will be thrusted inside her is suddenly much more daunting.

And yet, slowly, Mikasa finds a kernel of desire stirring in herself as well, the humiliation of submitting to Holden’s depravity almost reduced to background noise as her eyes take in how the Commander throws his head back with an escaped guttural sound and how the cut of his cheekbones suffuse with a dusky red flush. Everywhere else, Erwin presents himself with a posture ramrod-straight, but here he curves and arches towards her, reeled in with every suck of her mouth. Coaxing that from Erwin makes her almost forget how much danger they’re both in.

Glancing down at Mikasa, at his subordinate crouching before him, Erwin can’t help but linger on how the strain of the sucking gradually leaves her mouth tellingly reddened, the shared glisten on her lips and his cock evidence of how much she’s lavished him. He has trouble even convincing himself that he doesn’t want to fuck her after that, audience or not.

Though the voyeur present issues no protests either.

“Alright, alright,” Holden calls out with a mocking chuckle and a clap of his hands. “Now get on the couch, and I’m very particular about the next part, girl. Show us that pretty little arse on your hands and knees.”

Another unfamiliar command. Disrobing with woodenly stiff movements, Mikasa climbs onto the couch, her palms searching for support on the lush span of velvet. Her form is a supple landscape, a would-be picture of enticement to most. To Erwin however, the language of her body conveys rigidity around the shoulders and the muscles he’s mapped out before. He has always been careful to take her in a position that allows him to see her face, to watch for any sign of discomfort. Now, he deciphers what signals he can from a less divulging angle.

The black sheen of Mikasa’s hair shifts slightly, and Erwin can tell that she’s glancing at the magistrate before returning her dead-set gaze to the surface of the couch, to pretending the man isn’t there.

Working his hand around her hip to stroke and test the lips of her sex, Erwin instigates a shiver in both of them as Mikasa presses back against him, the curve of her ass rubbing against his swollen length. He’s seen the sweet plump mound of her multiple times now, but this is a different cleft presented for his viewing, and his cock nestles there, unbearably hard against her softness. For a moment, he can’t resist the demanding greed of his eyes and spreads her to more fully see her invitingly pink folds, wet and waiting for him.

“Come on, just do it,” Mikasa urges, her voice emitting in a nervous hiss.

A jut of his hips, and he’s buried inside her slick, tight heat, inducing her body to sag downwards with elbows splayed to counter the pressure. Dimly, she’s aware that the magistrate is laughing across the room. The ugly, discordant sound of it makes her want to cover her ears as well as her eyes, reverting to the petrified state of a near-captured child, but Erwin brings his torso against her back and whispers, “Don’t look at him. I’m going to make sure that you get out of here safely, and we’re so close to that so don’t look at him and focus on me.”

_Easier said than done_ , Mikasa thinks. His girth feels almost too much at this slant, and her breath stutters when Erwin presses all the way in, huge and heavy inside of her but also half on-top of her, a strain despite her strength. Biting her lip, she reminds herself of greater pains. He pulls back, and his careful, shallow rocking slowly morphs into something less gentle at the increasingly wet junction of where their bodies meet. The position is new to her, but it becomes quite clear that it isn’t to him, and his hips push her into a seductive, endless wave of undulating to smoothen his entry. The sensation of being invaded contorts and ripples through her, sinuously transforming into a frothy upswell of pleasure that starts to rise with every thrust. 

Behind her, Erwin runs a rough hand over the globe of flesh that he merges his lower body against, and she fleetingly imagines him leaving large imprints all over her flushed warm skin. Roaming to even more receptive areas, his touch trails under and up towards a bobbing breast, cupping the mound and exerting a backwards push that impales her even deeper onto his cock. Mikasa twists to the side, revealing a hint of nipple, and he leans down as if to kiss it, but she forcefully shakes her head because it’s still impossible to forget why they’re here, why they’ve been forced into this room for a corrupt official’s entertainment.

At the corner of her vision, Mikasa sees the magistrate get up on his feet, and she tenses, clenching hard around Erwin. She wants to finish this and wants to  _finish_  badly, and they’re so close that her body is shaking with the heightened sensitivity, overloaded with the feel of slippery velvet beneath her hands, the thickness of the cock splitting her open from behind, and the iron strength of Erwin’s right hand holding her by the hip. His other hand slips back to tracing the entrance of her sex, the soft, feathery strokes striking a contrast with the now more forceful grind of his length against her constricting walls. She takes it though, takes all of it on wavering arms, and then with one of his fingers added to his cock moving inside of her, she bows with the overwhelming tide, dropping down on the purple lounge.

Mikasa is still in a haze when the magistrate strolls over, and despite how swelteringly aflame she feels in the aftermath, a chill creeps onto her skin as Holden reaches down to run his fingers along her neck and shoulders. Apprehension and anticipation make her even more breathless as the man lewdly licks the pad of his thumb and the dampness that he’s just collected off of her.

But nothing happens, and she catches a glimpse of Erwin frowning with narrowed blue eyes. His back turned to the Commander, Alec Holden stretches his hand forward to touch her again, and she holds herself forcibly still to not break the magistrate’s arm in the most violent way she knows.

“Don’t tell me the top military graduate of her year is already tired out,” he croons, and he’s bending down to graze his lips on the skin right above her breasts. With a clogged throat, Mikasa begins counting to ten.  _If this doesn’t work, I’ll end his miserable life myself._

Erwin’s hand lands on the back of the magistrate’s neck, and she’s not sure if it’s the pinch of his fingers or the poison, but Holden slumps gracelessly against her, and she shoves the weight of him off, causing his body to fall to the floor.

He doesn’t get back up, and his veined eyelids remain pallid and closed. Prodding at the magistrate’s inert form with her foot, Mikasa questions in a rushed whisper, “Is this from the sleeping draught? Or — what did you do to his neck?”

“I’m not sure which one worked its effect on him. In any case, we can’t afford to stay around to figure out,” Erwin replies, and he’s throwing on his clothes while darting cautious looks at the door. “If we’re lucky, he’ll wake up remembering that he got part of what he wanted and thinking that he just doesn’t remember the rest.”

Nodding numbly, Mikasa stands and pulls on her own clothing as quickly as she can. “What about the servants and that valet of his?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re used to seeing their master passed out after visitations like this one,” the Commander tells her, pausing briefly as his eyes flick to her shoulders, left bare by the dress Holden instructed her to wear. He passes her his coat and hesitantly takes her hand as they move towards the door. “I’m not very good at being your superior officer, am I? Entrapping you in this situation…”

Objectively, she supposes, shrugging on his coat, the answer would be no. Something compels her though to murmur back, “You’re fulfilling your promise, aren’t you? Getting us out of here safely?”

Fortunately, they’re not stopped by any of the household attendants on their way out, and a strange giddiness fills her when they reach the carriage that will take them back to headquarters. Exhausted and relieved, Mikasa lets herself slip into slumber. Though her cheek is pressed against the window's cooling glass at the start of the journey, she awakens later, with a little embarrassment, to find herself leaning against Erwin at the end.

 

* * *

 

They don’t touch each other again after that.

Moreover, Erwin makes a point of not being alone with her.

Even four days later, Levi is emphatically present in the Commander’s office when Erwin tells her that the magistrate died a quiet death the night before. ‘Quiet’, Erwin explains, because the man’s throat was so compressed with swollen nodes that he couldn’t utter a sound by the end. Mikasa listens to the news quietly, expresses her satisfaction with a nod, and is politely dismissed after that.

They retreat into their roles, commander and cadet, settling into forceful indifference of the other.

Until their lives rupture a short while later, and she half-thinks him dead on the battlefield, her own consciousness fading away as she’s cradled and swayed by the cot carrying her.

Her ribs fractured along the middle though, and luckily the first pair of bones remain in place without more severe damage to critical vessels. In the hospital, Mikasa awakens several days before Erwin does, and for the first few visits, the Commander is persistently unconscious, his strong jawline gradually softened by stubble. Levi’s there more often than not, and one day when the Corporal appears close to slumping off the chair from fatigue, she dares to ask if she can take over while he rests.

Taking a seat by the Commander’s bedside, Mikasa flickers her gaze repeatedly to the stump of what remains of the man’s right arm, the bandages around it changed for fresh ones daily, yet still darkened each day with blood and discharge.

A soft moan drains from Erwin’s mouth, and he’s slowly roused to awareness, sitting up against the bedframe and finding nothing on his right side to prop his weight up. She reaches out to help him and then rethinks the action, hopping up instead to bring him some tea from the kettle Levi left behind.

Erwin’s left-hand grip on the cup is shaky at first, then stabilized with effort. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, wishing that she knew better words than those three syllables. “About your loss.”

“My personal loss,” Erwin replies with a strange, sad smile. “Is really nothing compared to what humanity has managed to salvage. Eren, after all, is still with us.”

Mikasa looks away. For all that she has strived to protect Eren, others have sacrificed much more to keep him alive. And here is the physical evidence before her.

“I’ve been reading the reports….”

“Should you be doing that so soon?” she blurts out. “You’re still recovering.”

“Reading and analyzing might be all I can do now,” Erwin answers before continuing, “From Eren’s own report, it seems that what may have activated this new ability of his….is you. An urge to protect you.”

Her chin dips into the warmth of the scarf, burrowing into the weave of the familiar, worn fibers. “It was more the situation, I think. He was desperate. We both were.”

“Even so,” Erwin says softly. “I hope some of your turmoil about him will gradually resolve.”

A blush tinges Mikasa’s cheeks, and she’s silent in contemplation for a few moments, thinking of the boy whose side she has sworn to forever walk by.

Abruptly, she then says, “The first time I saw you, I was walking back to the Jaegers’ home with Eren after we had collected firewood.”

The memory of that day suddenly stands clear and sharp in her mind, the weight of the pack on her shoulders, the eagerness in Eren’s gait doubling when he heard that the Scouting Legion had just returned from an expedition. He had climbed on top of a stack of boxes to see over the crowd’s heads and thereby catch a sight of the soldiers he admired so much. Her heart had not beat furiously with the excitement of hero worship as Eren’s did. She had been much more preoccupied with making sure that Eren did not lose balance and fall, but she remembers seeing a fair-haired Legion member riding with the rest of the column, head and shoulders tall but oddly arranged in a defeated stance that did not correspond with the mood of the younger bystanders.

“We were just children then,” Mikasa recalls, prompting Erwin to shake his head and joke half-heartedly, “That doesn’t make me feel much better.”

She continues though, “All the kids were looking at you like you were a hero, and I used to think back then that I didn’t really have much use for heroes.”

“A very sensible thought,” he remarks dryly.

“Perhaps,” she says and then lifts her head, dark eyes colliding with blue. “But now I think I understand what they saw then. It’s not much of a comfort, but know this, there are people who still think of you as a hero.”

 

* * *

 

It’s not a love story, what went on between them.

It’s not a love story, and when they survive, to their own amazement, against all odds through revolution and more, she marries one of the boys who entered the Legion with her. Erwin’s not surprised. Objectively speaking, it’s yet another display of decision-making on her part that he approves of. A small part of him wonders if this union renders them strangers for the rest of their lives. It would not be the first time he has been relegated to a buried part of someone's past.

A few years after the Titan conflict ends however, at a small gathering of the Legion’s survivors, Mikasa places herself deliberately next to him. As they silently watch the group nostalgically launch into boisterousness, she reaches over and touches his shoulder, undeterred by the shirt sleeve that dangles loosely with the open window’s incoming breeze. In a cabin located so close to the sea, there's always a breeze.

“I’m glad that you’re here,” Mikasa says, looking up at him. The words would sound trite coming from anyone else. “I thought of you.”

 

Afterwards, Erwin thinks to himself that he may have imagined her repeating that intimate phrase. Her touch still lingers though, like the weight of a phantom arm, like the memory of a meaningful kiss.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for how long this last part took! This chapter definitely felt like the hardest to write, and I'm still uncertain about the direction it ended up taking.
> 
> My sincere gratitude to everyone who read through this and who gave me such awesome encouragement. Thank you, and I hope this ending wasn't too disappointing.


End file.
